Table 1.

Case study summaries.

Case study	Objective	Intended audience	Platform	Dimensions of communicationa	Time frame and intensity (posting frequency)	Social filtering	Negotiated awareness	Staffing requirements	Evaluation
Cochrane Child Health [7]	Dissemination	Child health HCPb, child health researchers, and health care organizations	Twitter and blog	Asynchronous, one to many, dynamic, pull, remote, and iconic indexical	6 months, weekly blog posts, daily tweets, monthly journal club on Twitter	Influencers were tagged in tweets; hashtags were used to identify conditions under discussion	Content shared by influencers tagged and research group stakeholders	0.2 FTEc RCd, 0.2 FTE, information specialist, and 0.3 FTE graduate student or RAe	Twitter analytics, Bitly statistics, Altmetric scores, journal club, and participant survey feedback
#ItDoesntHaveToHurt [22]	Dissemination and engagement	Parents (primarily mothers)	Blog, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and stakeholder websites	Asynchronous, one to many, dynamic, remote, recorded, focal, push, durable, phonetic syllabic, and iconic indexical	12 months, varied with approximately 3 posts per month plus amplification and sharing	Content appeared on partner website and social media with a well-established community of parents, influencer promotion and engagement (parent bloggers across the country amplified content using their own social channels), hashtag use #ItDoesntHaveToHurt	Content shared by influencers, stakeholders, research groups’ social media channels, and research partners’ social media channels	0.75 FTE RC, 0.2 FTE, stakeholder PCf, and digital content creators, as needed	Web-based analytics, pre- and postsurveys and interviews, social listening and sentiment analysis, media analysis, partnership analysis, and patient engagement evaluation
Hirschsprung’s Disease Community [23]	Engagement (with caregivers to identify knowledge gaps) and knowledge exchange	Caregivers of children with Hirschsprung disease	Twitter, Facebook, and blog	Asynchronous, many to one, dynamic, and remote	1-month, daily interaction from parent-led administrative team, weekly posting and reminders during research	Community was pre-established	Posts and messages were from the administrator of an established community; the community has a clear focus, consistent posting, and committed membership	0.5 FTE RA, parent partner (ongoing community management), and communication staff (ongoing community management)	Google analytics and number of surveys completed
Parents Participating in Research Facebook Group [24]	Knowledge exchange and dialogue	Parents and caregivers of special needs children and child health researchers	Facebook	Asynchronous, many to many, and synchronous	9 months, varied with approximately 4 posts per week	Parent moderators direct messaged or tagged topics to parents and research contributors with possible perspectives to add to the discussion	Content shared by moderators, parent and caregivers, or researchers	2 parent moderators—approximately 0.4-0.7 FTE; KTg committee and parent moderator liaison—approximately 0.5 FTE	Analytics of engagement and activity (eg, number of posts and number of comments) and web-based survey of members

^aSee Multimedia Appendix 3.

^bHCP: health care providers.

^cFTE: full-time equivalent.

^dRC: research coordinator.

^eRA: research assistant.

^fPC: project coordinator.

^gKT: knowledge translation.