The Use of Social Media in Radiology Education

The Role of Twitter in Radiology Medical Education and Research: A Review of Current Practices and Drawbacks

The trends in society have provided favourable conditions for the rapid growth of radiology on social media, specifically there has been an expanding presence on Twitter. Currently, simple searches on Twitter yield a plethora of radiology education resources, that may be suited for medical students, residents or practicing radiologists. Educators have many tools at their disposal to deliver effective teaching. Over time, strategies such as including images and scrollable stacks often are more successful at gaining popularity or clicks online. Journals and authors can use Twitter to promote their new scientific work and potentially reach audiences they couldn't have prior. Attendees at conferences can get involved in the conversation by tweeting about the meeting and engaging with other attendees with mutual interests. Interested medical students, residents and even practicing radiologists can use Twitter as a means of networking and connecting with other scholars all around the globe. Within its glory, Twitter does carry some drawbacks including privacy concerns, equality, and risk of misinformation. Above all, the future of Twitter is bright and promising for all who are currently on it and plan to use it for their education, research, or professional advancement.

Social networks in radiology: Toward a new paradigm in medical education?

The universally accepted system for the transmission of scientific knowledge in the field of medicine has long been grounded in scientific publications. Social networks can be a useful alternative or complementary method of transmitting this knowledge. Social networks (e.g., Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and TikTok) generate educational contents that enable quality training, despite their informality. Each of these networks has strengths and weaknesses that users should know about. These platforms are free and allow for real-time discussion. They make it easy to incorporate content and to contact experts or access sources of knowledge directly. Aware of their influence, publishers have incorporated metrics to measure the impact of their articles in social networks (Altmetrics). These networks should be incorporated into departmental training programs immediately. Nevertheless, navigating through social networks is complex, and the hashtag-based system of searching is inefficient, limiting their use in education. Despite the informality of the knowledge generated on social networks, the importance of these networks as a source of knowledge is growing. Radiology departments must design a strategy for using social networks for education rather than for propaganda, creating well-organized focal groups that search for contents through systematic, filtered review of information, digital repositories, and review sessions and for sharing this knowledge both inside and outside the department. Departments must also implement a strategy for communicating through these networks.

Social Media Usage for Radiology Education: A One-Month 2022 Global Survey

OBJECTIVE

To create our own survey to identify the most recent ways in which the global radiology community is using social media specifically for radiology education.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

We created a 30-question survey on SurveyMonkey, promoted it on our CTisus Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, as well as Reddit accounts, and to our newsletter subscribers, sharing it from March 15 to April 5, 2022. The survey requested demographic information, and asked respondents to clarify their role in radiology and how they participated in each social media platform for radiology education.

RESULTS

We received 254 responses, of which 253 specified their role in radiology: 40.71% were radiologists (n = 103); 24.90% were radiologic technologists (n = 63); 17.79% were residents in radiology (n = 45); and 16.60% engaged in other radiology professions (n = 42). In total, 65 countries were represented (n = 250). Individuals aged 25-34 (n = 89) represented the most popular age group, followed by those aged 35-44 (n = 47), then 45-54 (n = 36). As a combined group, 80.71% said they use social media "every day" or "a few times a week" (n = 205). YouTube was the most popular social media platform for radiology education (n = 180), followed by Instagram (n = 156) and Facebook (n = 110). In terms of goals for radiology education on social media, most answered "to learn more in radiology" (n = 217), with "to keep myself updated on current events in radiology" (n = 162), and "to participate in radiology discussions with colleagues" (n = 67) also well represented. Almost 3 quarters of respondents felt that social media was "extremely useful" or "very useful" for radiology education (n = 187). Approximately half of respondents said they "learn much more from social media" or "learn a bit more from social media" over traditional resources such as textbooks and medical journals (n = 126).

CONCLUSION

Our results suggest that the global radiology community finds education via social media to be useful, and often partakes in such education. It also highlights which social media are relevant for current radiology education and which are not. We anticipate returning to this survey approximately every 2 years to examine how the landscape of social media continues to change in the world of radiology education.

Bibliometric analyses of social media for educational purposes over four decades

The unexpected outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic has led students to frequently use social media to receive education, which brought about both positive and negative learning outcomes (Oliveira et al., 2022). To address the issue of integrating social media into education, this study conducted both quantitative and qualitative studies using VOSviewer and CitNetExplorer. The qualitative study through CitNetExplorer, involving 1780 publications, concluded that while social media might have gained popularity in education based on the classic theoretical framework of the zone of proximal development, there might be many challenges such as teacher resistance, data privacy, costs, and ethical and social issues. Besides, this study conducted bibliometric analyses using VOSviewer (N = 1841) to identify the top cited authors, organizations, documents, references, sources, countries, and keywords with high occurrences based on the citation networks. In the future, researchers could enhance the studies on how to guide students and teachers to properly integrate social media into education.

A Gamified Social Media-Based Head and Neck Radiology Education Initiative of the American Society of Head and Neck Radiology: Viewership and Engagement Trends at 3 Years

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE

Social media has made inroads in medical education. We report the creation and 3-year (2018-2021) longitudinal assessment of the American Society of Head and Neck Radiology Case of the Week (#ASHNRCOTW), assessing viewership, engagement, and impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on this Twitter-based education initiative.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Unknown cases were tweeted from the American Society of Head and Neck Radiology account weekly. Tweet impressions (number of times seen), engagements (number of interactions), and new followers were tabulated. A social media marketing platform identified worldwide distribution of Twitter followers. Summary and t test statistics were performed.

RESULTS

#ASHNRCOTW was highly visible with 2,082,280 impressions and 203,137 engagements. There were significantly greater mean case impressions (9917 versus 6346), mean case engagements (1305 versus 474), case engagement rates (13.06% versus 7.76%), mean answer impressions (8760 versus 5556), mean answer engagements (908 versus 436), answer engagement rates (10.38% versus 7.87%), mean total (case + answer) impressions (18,677 versus 11,912), mean total engagements (2214 versus 910), and total engagement rates (11.79% versus 7.69%) for cases published after the pandemic started (all P values < .001). There was a significant increase in monthly new followers after starting #ASHNRCOTW (mean, 134 versus 6; P < .001) and significantly increased monthly new followers after the pandemic started compared with prepandemic (mean, 178 versus 101; P = .003). The American Society of Head and Neck Radiology has 7564 Twitter followers throughout 130 countries (66% outside the United States).

CONCLUSIONS

Social media affords substantial visibility, engagement, and global outreach for radiology education. #ASHNRCOTW viewership and engagement increased significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Formación online en Radiología en tiempos de COVID

La pandemia por COVID-19 ha alterado de forma significativa la metodología que tradicionalmente se ha empleado para la enseñanza de la Radiología en pregrado, posgrado y formación continuada. La necesidad de continuar con la formación en Radiología bajo una situación de distanciamiento físico ha provocado el uso masivo de metodología online y aquí es donde Internet se ha constituido en una solución para mitigar el problema. El objetivo de este trabajo es presentar una serie de recursos útiles de acceso gratuito que comparten la filosofía #FOAMRad para la formación online en Radiología en estos tiempos de COVID.