Table 3.

Proposed typology of science communication strategies used by health scientists in the digital and social media ecosystem.

Type	Definition	Examples of each type of strategy
Content	Strategies to specify the type of health science–related content to be communicated	Announce new studies, research articles, and findings [10,21,23,24] and publish commentaries on health-related research [24]
Credibility	Strategies to support the credibility of health science–related content to be communicated	Present the confidence in the results (quality of evidence) on a scale [28,29] and disclose the sources of research funding [32]
Engagement	Strategies to increase public engagement with health science–related content to be communicated	Use hashtags [21,23,25] and update frequently [10,22]
Intention	Strategies to personalize health science–related content according to certain specific objectives or to convey a specific message	Make information actionable, that is, specify when to engage in an action and embed a trigger [32] and consider the usefulness of the research findings for the target audience [4,27,32]
Linguistics	Strategies to determine the linguistic microcomponents of the textual scientific information to be communicated	Minimize the use of, or replace, scientific jargon [27,28,31] and avoid acronyms [31]
Planification	Strategies to plan the operationalization of science communication, often in function of the audience(s) targeted	Develop a plan for engaging the targeted audience [10,33] and develop a YouTube channel devoted to disseminating research progress and findings along the way [33]
Presentation	Strategies to determine the structure and the visual presentation of the health science–related content to be communicated	Include pictures and, to a lesser extent, graphs [27] keep sentences and paragraphs short [31]
Social exchange	Strategies to increase and guide social exchanges related to the health science–related content	Encourage discussion, participation, and engagement [10,34,35] and converse with other users on topics related to health science on digital and social media [22]
Statistics	Strategies to determine the format of numeric and statistical scientific information	Present natural frequencies rather than percentages and probabilities [28] and be consistent in the numeric formats used [28]