A new study, published in Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology, examined tweeting activity, networks and common topics mentioned on Twitter at four international infection control and infectious disease conferences.
Researchers conducted a cross-sectional study involving a Twitter 'trawl' each month between July 1, 2016, and Nov. 31, 2016. The trawl identified official hashtags of the conferences for the UK Infection Prevention Society; IDWeek 2016; the Federation of Infectious Society/Hospital Infection Society; and the Australasian College for Infection Prevention and Control.
They identified topics from each tweet and studied the frequency and timing of tweets. In total, researchers analyzed 23,718 tweets, which used one of the two hashtags of interest.
Here are four study findings:
1. The study shows that the most tweets were posted during the conferences.
2. A link to a web address was a significant predictor of whether a tweet would be retweeted.
3. Tweeting on topics such as Clostridium difficile and the media were also significant factors predicting a retweet.
4. Tweets that contained a picture were significantly less likely to be retweeted.