The Twitter pandemic: The critical role of Twitter in the dissemination of medical information and misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic

By Hans Rosenberg, Shahbaz Syed, S. Rezaie. CJEM, 2020

297 citations recorded by the source corpus.

As the world finds itself in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, social media has become inundated with content associated with the virus. Although all social media platforms (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, blogs) are currently providing us with medical content, perhaps no other consistently plays a more prominent role in the medical world than Twitter. Emergency medicine (EM) is on the bleeding edge, where practice at the bedside is continually being shared on social media and this pandemic has resulted in immense activity on Twitter. Twitter is a microblogging and social networking service where users post messages using “tweets” that are limited to 240 characters. For well over a decade, Twitter has become increasingly used as a platform where medical practitioners exchange ideas, information, and commentary. The hashtag #FOAMed garners thousands of tweets per hour, and at this momentous period in medical history, no subject is more prominent than COVID-19. With the free-flow of messages and ideas that are not vetted or peer-reviewed, unlike classic medical educational resources, is there a risk of harm? What are the benefits to the EM community from Twitter? Finally, how does the average emergency physician (EP) get the most out of the information out there?

Subfields: General Health Professions, Health, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/632ab6318bc237cc152a7dab2af18cb683fe7a0e

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