Peer Reviews: Tweeting the Meeting: An in-depth analysis of Twitter activity at Kidney Week 2011

8/13/2019 Peer Reviews: Tweeting the Meeting: An in-depth analysis of Twitter activity at Kidney Week 2011

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Desai T, Shariff A, Shariff A, Kats M, Christiano C, Fang X, Ferris M. Tweetingthe Meeting: An in-depth analysis of Twitter activity at Kidney Week 2011 . PLoOne 2012. Vol. 7, No. 7, pp. 1-9.

Nephrology On-Demand http://www.myNOD.org

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer #1:

I read the manuscript "Tweeting the Meeting: A in-depth analysis of

Twitter activity at Kidney Week 2011" with great interest because

understanding how social media can enhance academic meetings is

important. The authors analyzed 993 tweets from 173 individuals.

Presumably all these individuals took part in the meeting, but that is not

clear from the manuscript in its current form. They found that among

informative tweets, there was more negative sentiment expressed, but the

presented results seem to obscure this finding. A more useful paperwould look at the social media shortcomings of the conference with an

eye to improving social media engagement in conferences. I would

speculate that most nephrology conferences do not cater to junior

investigators who are more likely to tweet and this may have been one

reason why so much negative sentiment was found. Currently the

advertising tweets would seem to drown out substantive contributions

and that is a major drawback of using twitter in this context. Althoughthe idea is of interest, there are major problems with the introduction,

the outcomes, format, analysis of negative sentiment, and connection to

public awareness as outlined below:

MAJOR COMMENTS

1) Introduction weak. The introduction is only one paragraph and

requires more thought and revision. The authors mention general

statements about social media being important for professional societies,

but they need to dig deeper. How has social media been used in other

scholarly conferences, either well or poorly? What are the risks and

benefits? How does one engage young academics especially in these

kinds of activities? How does focusing on social media apply to

individuals who do not use it or do not understand it?


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2) Public education and academic conference connection. The focus

of academic conferences is not typically for public education as the

author suggests in the introduction. Usually scholarly conferences are

ways for academics to exchange and while popular media are present,

this is only relevant to a small number of transformative research

results. Why is public education a high priority for nephrologists in

particular?

3) Outcomes. The authors did NOT measure "public awareness."

Tweets were all from conference participants who are not the public.

This needs to be clarified.

4) Format. Number all pages. Double space. Refer to PLoSguidelines for submitting manuscripts. Having methods after

introduction would be a more typical format.

5) Negative sentiment is not analyzed. The authors should directly

state their findings about more negative informative tweets instead of

stating the inverse. Box 1 only says "less positive" - implying that

negative is not actually negative. Be more objective about descriptions.

6) Definitions unclear. Recommend defining twitter, internalcitations and tweet amplification, and other terms that will not be

familiar to a typical nephrology audience (remember only 1.4% of

participants even tweeted).

7) Increasing public awareness unclear. The authors argue that

having informative content, internal citations, and positive sentiment

increases public awareness. Why are negative sentiment tweets not

increasing public awareness? This is a key point because more negative

informative tweets appeared.

MINOR COMMENTS:

1) Pg 3, line 8. Twitter is an "online networking service." This is a

poor definition and should be revised. Also, this idea of defining twitter

is essential to the introduction.


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2) Pg 4, line 28. Why were Spanish tweets not analyzed?

3) Pg 4, results. State total number of informative and uninformative

tweets.

4) Pg 4, line 44. What about junior investigator pathways or anything

specific to young participants?

5) Pg 5, line 39. Awkward sentence, rephrase.

6) Pg 6, line 37. Why focus on total if only informative tweets are

what you are interested in? Again, being painfully accurate is more

important than painting a rosy inaccurate picture.

7) Pg7, two places underlined. No need to underline for emphasis.

8) References. Use PLoS convention throughout.

Reviewer #2: Desai et al. present a very novel and unique study

examining the use, content and characteristics of social media,

specifically Twitter, during the largest annual nephrology meeting in theUnited States. With the growing interesting in applications of this

communication format for academic, outreach and marketing purposes,

this research effort also promotes novel methodology for consideration.

Comments:

1. Several times the authors note in the manuscript, including the

abstract, that the objective was to determine how "effectively" Twitter was

used to increase public awareness and education of kidney disease.

However, this study has no measure of that outcome (i.e. public

awareness or education). The objectives of the study should be clarified

to describe only that for which data is available --- the quantity and

characteristics of Twitter messaging.


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2. The rationale for describing sentiment remains unclear. Given the

novelty of this area, including in the introduction the rationale for this

characteristics would be helpful to the reader. Also, the authors seem to

imply that positive sentiment is what is desired. Is this always true at a

scientific meeting where debate may occur and differing viewpoints

expressed? Could negative sentiment represent disagreement with a

Tweet content that could be "useful" to the dialogue?

3. Clarify the attendees at the ASN conference. Not all 10,000+ are

health care providers and there is more heterogeneity in the type of

professionals attending.

4. Provide more basic summary of the details of the conferenceincluding the number of days, tracks, types of sessions, vendors, etc?

This will aid in framing the data about tweets relative to the overall

conference structure.

5. What is the rationale for assuming the relationship between

number of posters and tweets is linear? What about complex areas with

few investigators/studies, but those that do happen are very

provocative/high impact?6. As above, expand on the application of the sentiment score. What

do these values and the magnitudes described in this study mean?

7. Can the authors make any comments about the people that either

generate or consume the tweets?

8. Omit the statement about STROBE guidelines, unless required by

the editor.

9. Can the authors comment about any misinformation - especially

"informative" misinformation among the Tweets examined? One of the

potential concerns about social media is the possible rapid dissemination

of inaccurate information.

10. How do these analyses specifically suggest that "physicians" can

confidently use Twitter - as stated in the conclusion?


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Documents

Peer Reviews: Tweeting the Meeting: An in-depth analysis of Twitter activity at Kidney Week 2011