J. N. Riesel1,2,6, J. S. Ng-Kamstra2,3,6, S. L. Greenberg2,4,6, N. P. Raykar2,5,6, J. G. Meara2,6 1Massachusetts General Hospital,Department Of Surgery,Boston, MA, USA 2Children’s Hospital Boston,Department Of Plastic And Oral Surgery,Boston, MA, USA 3University of Toronto,Department Of Surgery,Toronto, Ontario, Canada 4Medical College Of Wisconsin,Department Of Surgery,Milwaukee, WI, USA 5Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center,Department Of Surgery,Boston, MA, USA 6Harvard School Of Medicine,Program In Global Surgery And Social Change,Brookline, MA, USA
Introduction:
The Lancet Commission on Global Surgery (LCoGS) addresses the critical need for surgical care worldwide in an era marked by the pervasive use of social media (SM). To rally the global health community, engage key stakeholders, and strengthen the content and impact of the Commission findings, LCoGS launched a SM campaign capitalizing on the widespread use of SM by both academics and the general public. LCoGS Twitter and Facebook accounts were launched in December 2013. Live updates from commission meetings, current articles, news, and advocacy pertaining to global surgery were posted. However, at the conception of this campaign, little was known about strategies for optimizing the reach and engagement of global surgery SM posts.
Methods:
A retrospective review of all original LCoGS Twitter and Facebook posts was performed. Posts were characterized across 25 suspected explanatory content and timing variables. The impact of each Facebook post was measured as engagement and reach, where engagement was measured as the number of unique users who clicked within the post, and reach was measured as the number of unique users who received the post within their news feed. For Twitter analysis, public engagement was measured as total number of interactions (Likes, Retweets, and Favorites) with each tweet. Univariate and multivariate regression analyses were used to determine the most impactful content in LCoGS’ SM posts.
Results:
391 Twitter and 113 Facebook posts from a 7-month period were analyzed. For Facebook, time of day of post, use of the “#GlobalSurgery” hashtag, and presence of a hyperlink were significantly correlated with SM reach. Messages posted after 4PM had more than twice the reach of those posted before 8AM. For Twitter, posts including links, hashtags, statistics, and expressions of opinion significantly correlated with increased engagement. Tweets containing specific global surgery statistics had an average of 2.49 times the number of interactions than those without. For both platforms, univariate analysis revealed trends of increased engagement when women’s issues, children’s issues, or photographic images were included in the post.
Conclusion:
SM stimulates a global, multidirectional convergence that can enhance engagement, advocacy, and academic pursuits. Thoughtful construction of SM posts can lead to increased engagement with desired stakeholders. Both content and timing influence the reach of SM posts for a given audience and should be considered when constructing a social media campaign. Although we can investigate the reach and engagement stimulated by the LCoGS SM posts, we cannot determine the effect the posts have on human behavior or scientific pursuits. Still, as the groundswell of dependency on SM as a source of current news, public opinion, and scientific work continues to grow, SM can be considered a cardinal tool to both the general public and the surgeon scientist alike.