Scot Health

1. One step beyond: Mapping older tweets and retweets

   Over the past 3 years I have been studying social networks for health (e.g. public health campaigns, clinical conferences). I have been collaborating with clinicians and analysts across the world in this work, publishing some of the outputs in peer-reviewed journals as listed below, studying the content, influencers, components of tweets that could influence retweeting, …

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2. Reflections on live tweeting social media analysis from #RCGPAC.

   Personal reflections on attending, live tweeting and analysing tweets at the Royal College of General Practitioners Annual Conference October 2019

3. Have we passed “peak tweeting” at medical conferences? (and other final reflections on social media analysis)

   Conferences are an important way of sharing new medical and scientific knowledge. Twitter is an important way of summarising and sharing information from conference. This blog sets out to answer the question: “Have we reached peak tweeting at medical conferences?”. Popular social media tools produce quite misleading results, combining tweets and retweets, tweeters and retweeters, …

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4. Communication in a complex world – perspectives for Public Health/ NHS teams

   Recently we had a discussion about communication in one of our teams. It’s a regular bugbear in any department: Do we miss important messages in the dozens or hundreds of emails we receive in a day? (Disclosure – I have switched off emails when preparing this blog, so I can concentrate) How should we manage …

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5. Who sets the health agenda in the UK and globally? An exploration of the early #FakeNews era

   It is important for healthcare workers to understand how health news is reported. Social media provides ways to understand who makes and shares health stories, the potential audience, and the stories themselves. Back in January 2017 Prof Chris Oliver and I prepared a research paper on this topic which we submitted to two international medical journals in February and March 2017. It was not accepted for publication - perhaps it was too early for this important topic. I came across the paper again recently when working through files as I prepare to move job (February 2019). The timing of this analysis - just at the point that Trump acquired the keys to the White House, and just when Chris and I were trying to work out what social network analysis reports could tell us - makes this a potentially important piece of work, so Chris and I have decided to share the paper in a way made possible by social media - a blog. Download the full paper here.