Special Feature: Using Social Media to Promote Cutting-Edge Research in Transplantation: Results of an International Survey

INTRODUCTION

Social media has radically reshaped modern scientific discourse. The field of transplantation is unique in intersecting medicine, technology, immunology, ethics, and public policy like no other. Social media can rapidly disseminate this information globally^1–5. This was most evident during the COVID-19 pandemic when transplant teams published several studies demonstrating the effects of vaccination in post-transplant patients^6–11.

Social media is an entirely different means of communication compared to traditional media. It spreads the news in an accessible manner and makes it easy to share content too. Measuring the impact of this phenomenon in transplantation is still a novel concept^12–16. Due to the increasing adoption of social media by transplant teams, we conducted a survey to assess how social media is being used to promote current and new research in transplantation.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Study Population and Survey Distribution

We electronically distributed surveys to subscribers to the weekly email of newly published articles in the Transplantation or Transplantation Direct journals, those who have submitted an article to the Transplantation or Transplantation Direct journals in the past 5 years, members of The Transplantation Society (TTS), and subscribers to newsletters from the TTS (Tribune and Tribune Plus) from November 17-December 31, 2022. Surveys were distributed via email to the Transplantation journals’ editors, authors, and reviewers; through the TTS Tribune Plus newsletter; on social media (Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook); and the TTS website. The survey link was re-posted to social media pages several times throughout the dissemination period and 1 follow-up email was sent on December 12, 2022. The survey was hosted by Qualtrics (Provo, UT, USA) and was available on mobile phones and computers. This study (s22–00681) was deemed exempt by the NYU Langone Health Institutional Review Board.

Study Design

This survey study was designed to describe respondent profession and areas of scientific interest, how and why they use social media for professional purposes, their awareness of various engagement measures, and how they plan to use social media for professional purposes in the future. Five screener questions were included before the survey to ensure that participants were 18 years or older and that they were involved in the Transplantation journal or the TTS community.

The 23-item web-based survey consisted of 21 closed-ended questions and 2 free-text response questions. 9 of the closed-ended questions included free-text response options such as “other” and “please list the languages you use”. The survey was developed by a team with expertise in survey development, qualitative research, social media research, and transplantation. Nine researchers (outside of the project team) pilot-tested the survey to enhance face validity before distribution.

Statistical Analyses

All analyses were performed using SAS OnDemand for Academics (SAS Institute Inc). Frequencies, percentages, and medians were calculated to describe the survey sample. Free-text response questions were analyzed using inductive categorization. The first coder inductively categorized the responses using Microsoft Excel version 16.63.1 and met with the second coder to reach a consensus on categories and ensure reliability.

RESULTS

See Table 1 for a summary of key findings.

Table 1.

Summary of Key Findings

How respondents use social media for professional purposes	94% of respondents reported that they use at least one social media platform for professional purposes and 95% reported that they had used a social media platform for professional purposes in the last 30 days. The top two platforms were LinkedIn (56%) and Twitter (54%).
Why respondents use social media to share their work	Keeping up with cutting-edge research in their field (65%); identifying new opportunities for collaboration (41%); participating in informal discussions with colleagues about new research (37%); increasing their standing in their field (31%); becoming aware of new calls for grants and deadlines (24%); and mentoring and being mentored (15%).
Awareness of Engagement Measures	64% of respondents were aware of the Altmetric donut of their published work, 53% were aware of the Altmetric score, and only 24% were aware of the h-index.
How respondents might use social media for professional purposes in the future	61% of respondents reported that they would consider using social media to promote patient education and engagement with research.
Social Media Usage Concerns	Information quality; inability to control responses from other users; inability to control unintended or misuse of the information shared; privacy concerns

Note: Total n=94.

Respondent Demographics

From a total of 110 respondents, 6 were removed due to ineligibility and a further 10 due to not providing any responses. 4 respondents submitted incomplete responses but these were included in the analysis (n=94).

72% of respondents reported that they were either physicians or surgeons, and the majority worked in hospitals (74%) and universities (71%). More than half reported that their primary area of scientific focus was clinical science (60%) and that their primary area of focus was on the kidneys, liver, or pancreas (60%). Respondents worked in 32 different countries but mostly in; the United States (25%), Italy (8%), Australia (8%), India (6%), and Spain (5%).

How respondents use social media for professional purposes

94% of respondents reported that they used at least one social media platform for professional purposes (median=2) and 95% reported that they had used one in the last 30 days. The top two platforms were LinkedIn (56%) and Twitter (54%), followed by Facebook (28%), YouTube (21%), and Instagram (15%). Very few respondents reported using TikTok, Snapchat, or others (I.e., Mastodon and ResearchGate). Respondents used these platforms to identify new publications (61%), learn (56%), conference updates (45%), engage with opinion leaders (44%), discuss with colleagues (40%), network (49%), and for other reasons such as recruiting study participants (9%). The majority of respondents (60%) reported that they did not follow either the Transplantation or Transplantation Direct Twitter accounts before taking the survey.

More than half of respondents (54%) reported that they use languages other than English to communicate on social media for professional purposes. The top 5 languages other than English were Spanish, Italian, French, German, and Dutch.

71% of respondents have had their work shared via social media, but only 54% have had their institution share their work on social media. Respondents shared their work on social media through Tweets, retweets, or likes (50%), visual abstracts (36%), LinkedIn (32%), Facebook (26%), online journal clubs, webinars & blogs (19%), live tweeting (15%), Instagram (13%), YouTube (9%), and other methods on Mastodon, Research Gate, and TikTok (6%).

Why do respondents use social media for dissemination

Social media benefits respondents professionally in the following ways: keeping up with cutting-edge research (65%); identifying collaborations (41%); participating in informal discussions with colleagues (37%); increasing their standing in their field (31%); becoming aware of new calls for grants and deadlines (24%); and mentoring and being mentored (15%).

Respondents listed several reasons why they chose specific social media platforms including; to increase visibility and impact of work; to share information with colleagues, patients, and research participants; because certain platforms (like Twitter and LinkedIn) are deemed more “professional” as they are used by colleagues; because they have a user-friendly interface; and because they already use these platforms for personal purposes.

Awareness of engagement measures

The Altmetric Attention Score is an automatically calculated, weighted count of all of the attention a research output has received based on volume, sources, and authors¹⁷. Before taking the survey more respondents were aware of the Altmetric donut of their publications (64%) rather than the Altmetric score (53%)¹⁸. Moreover, only 24% of respondents were aware of their h-index before taking the survey. This latter readout is intended to represent both the productivity and the impact of the scholars’ work¹⁹.

How respondents might use social media for professional purposes in the future

Most respondents reported that they were very (39%) or somewhat (46%) likely to use visual abstracts to disseminate their research. 68% said that they found visual abstracts created through Tidbit to be more appealing than the classic visual abstracts created by Transplantation.

More than half (61%) of respondents reported that they would consider using social media to promote patient education and research engagement, 30% weren’t sure, and 9% would not consider it.

Social media concerns

The following concerns about using social media were noted; information quality (due to lack of online moderators, oversimplification, or exaggeration of results); inability to control responses from disruptive users; inability to control information misuse; privacy concerns; time-consuming or distractive nature of the platforms and finally, the preponderance of social media platforms towards the younger generations.

DISCUSSION

This survey has demonstrated significantly diverse purposes driving their active engagement of transplant teams on social media. The majority of respondents were clinicians from the USA/Europe working in hospitals & universities. They broadly used LinkedIn and Twitter to; learn, keep up with novel research, and conferences, improve their reputation, network, and identify new collaborations. Interestingly, most respondents would use social media in the future to increase patient engagement. This is important as modern-day patients play active roles in their health and engage regularly with other patients through online communities^20,21.

Previous surveys of surgeons identified Facebook as the most regularly used social media platform whereas only 20% regularly used Twitter^12,22. In comparison, we found that LinkedIn and Twitter are the most commonly used platforms. Sandal et al. recommended that social media platforms should be used to engage with the transplantation community, including patients and donors¹⁶. Almost half of our respondents reported that they already used these platforms to engage with opinion leaders and to network, but far fewer engaged with patients on social media. These results highlight that social media users in the Transplantation community are a heterogenous cohort with different professional goals.

Measuring the impact of social media was not assessed in previous surveys of the scientific community on social media^12,13,16. Amongst our respondents, we found that half were aware of the Altmetric score/doughnut however few knew their h-index. Future studies will delineate if such metrics are indicators of future citations or merely, the reputation of the individual disseminating the work. Scientific journals may also need to look to other industries for inspiration. For example, the marketing industry prefers economically-tangible metrics such as site traffic, brand loyalty, sales, and customer engagement^23,24.

Importantly, the vast majority of our respondents would consider using social media for future patient engagement. Patients actively use platforms such as Twitter and Instagram so it is reasonable that tailored posts democratize healthcare literacy by raising awareness of drug trials and health policies^25–27.

Finally, our respondents also raised professionalism concerns. The unchecked nature of posts combined with unverified user credentials risks disseminating false information²⁸. Individuals posting inaccurate information or displaying unprofessional traits risk their credibility as well as that of their profession and institution^13,16. Another vital issue is patient privacy. Transplant patients are limited to tertiary medical centers for their care so clinicians discussing cases online have to be tactful to protect patient confidentiality.

Limitations

Our survey’s key limitations are selection bias and the low response rate. This survey was shared through social media channels (Twitter/LinkedIn) as well as the mailing lists of the Transplantation journal and The Transplantation Society. This would have attracted responses from those already engaged in scientific scholarship and social media. Nevertheless, our data demonstrated survey engagement from a global audience with diverse backgrounds. This is important as it demonstrates the wide reach of the Transplantation community online. With the increasing uptake of social media use, this will only improve.

CONCLUSION

Overall, our survey has demonstrated that scientists and physicians in Transplantation are increasingly using social media to promote their work and interconnect. We recommend that future studies focus on how social media use impacts the creation of purpose-built physician/patient communities and the promotion of organ donation and patient engagement.