Social Media Engagement at Academic Conferences: Report of the Association of Pathology Chairs 2018 and 2019 Annual Meeting Social Media Committee

Yonah C Ziemba; Dana Razzano; Timothy C Allen; Adam L Booth; Scott R Anderson; Anne Champeaux; Michael D Feldman; Valerie Fitzhugh; Simone Gittens; Marilea Grider; Mary Gupta; Christina Hanos; Karen Kelly; Tarush Kothari; Jennifer Laudadio; Amy Y Lin; Kamran M Mirza; Kathleen T Montone; Victor G Prieto; Daniel G Remick; Nicole D Riddle; Michael Schubert; Kelley Suskie; Nadeem Zafar; Stanley J Robboy; Priscilla S Markwood

doi:10.1177/2374289520934019

Social Media Engagement at Academic Conferences: Report of the Association of Pathology Chairs 2018 and 2019 Annual Meeting Social Media Committee

Acad Pathol. 2020 Jul 17:7:2374289520934019. doi: 10.1177/2374289520934019. eCollection 2020 Jan-Dec.

Authors

Yonah C Ziemba¹, Dana Razzano², Timothy C Allen³, Adam L Booth⁴, Scott R Anderson⁵, Anne Champeaux⁶, Michael D Feldman⁷, Valerie Fitzhugh⁸, Simone Gittens², Marilea Grider⁹, Mary Gupta¹⁰, Christina Hanos³, Karen Kelly¹¹, Tarush Kothari², Jennifer Laudadio¹², Amy Y Lin¹³, Kamran M Mirza¹⁴, Kathleen T Montone⁷, Victor G Prieto¹⁵, Daniel G Remick¹⁶, Nicole D Riddle⁶, Michael Schubert¹⁷, Kelley Suskie¹⁸, Nadeem Zafar¹⁹, Stanley J Robboy²⁰, Priscilla S Markwood²¹

Affiliations

¹ Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell, Hempstead, NY, USA.
² Westchester Medical Center, New York Medical College, Valhalla, NY, USA.
³ University of Mississippi Medical Center, Jackson, MS, USA.
⁴ University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, TX, USA.
⁵ University of Vermont Medical Center, Burlington, VT, USA.
⁶ Ruffolo, Hooper, and Associates; University of South Florida Morsani College of Medicine, Tampa, FL, USA.
⁷ University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
⁸ Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, Newark, NJ, USA.
⁹ Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA.
¹⁰ University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis, TN, USA.
¹¹ SUNY Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, NY, USA.
¹² University of Arkansas Medical Sciences, Little Rock, AR, USA.
¹³ University of Illinois at Chicago, IL, USA.
¹⁴ Loyola University Medical Center, Chicago, IL, USA.
¹⁵ University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, USA.
¹⁶ Boston University School of Medicine, MA, USA.
¹⁷ Texere Publishing, New York, NY, USA.
¹⁸ University of Rochester Medical Center, NY, USA.
¹⁹ University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA.
²⁰ Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, NC, USA.
²¹ Association of Pathology Chairs, Wilmington, DE, USA.

Abstract

The use of social media at academic conferences is expanding, and platforms such as Twitter are used to share meeting content with the world. Pathology conferences are no exception, and recently, pathology organizations have promoted social media as a way to enhance meeting exposure. A social media committee was formed ad hoc to implement strategies to enhance social media involvement and coverage at the 2018 and 2019 annual meetings of the Association of Pathology Chairs. This organized approach resulted in an 11-fold increase in social media engagement compared to the year prior to committee formation (2017). In this article, the social media committee reviews the strategies that were employed and the resultant outcome data. In addition, we categorize tweets by topic to identify the topics of greatest interest to meeting participants, and we discuss the differences between Twitter and other social media platforms. Lastly, we review the existing literature on this topic from 23 medical specialties and health care fields.

Keywords: Twitter; academic conference; pathology; social media.