Ruffer, N., Knitza, J., & Krusche, M. (2020). #Covid4Rheum: an analytical twitter study in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. Rheumatology international, 40(12), 2031-2037. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00296-020-04710-5

University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

Twitter can be used to engage with a diverse audience and users to amplify the influence of scientific publications and research through the use of hashtags and other data mining identification and analyses. In this study, the primary focus was on the rheumatology community and collaboration across different professional roles.

#Covid4Rheum: an analytical twitter study in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic

- Looked at activities regarding #Covid4Rheum between March 3 and June 1, 2020
- Used Vincinitas for basic tweet data and calculated the engagement (interactions with the hashtag in response tweets) and influence (number followers the users have) of the tweets using this specific hashtag
- Qualitative analysis of the primary tweets by two reviewers

#Covid4Rheum: an analytical twitter study in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic method

- Collected 2483 tweets from 1397 users; 245 primary tweets, 2201 retweets, 37 replies
- #Covid4Rheum reached 6916 users influenced 6.7 million users 
- 44.9% of the tweets were written by healthcare professionals and/or researchers 
- 88.97% of primary tweets were written by professional Twitter users 
- 42.1% of the tweets referenced the COVID-19 Global Rheumatology Alliance registries
- 33.4% of the tweets contained additional information from scientific communities or publications 

#Covid4Rheum: an analytical twitter study in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic results

- Twitter can effectively reach a global audience – selected tweets were in 7 languages and from 19 countries
- Different groups of people all interacted with Twitter hashtags – healthcare professionals, support groups, and scientific organizations and journals 
- Twitter in the exchange of medical knowledge – telemedicine introduced and mentioned in 11.1% of the tweets

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