Twitter consolidates its hegemony as the main social network that users come to know “urgently” what happens regarding health policies worldwide.
Although, according to a study by Planner Media, of every 100 Trending Topics (TT), only 1 is related to health, Twitter is still the main channel of information that people come to.
In the study entitled "When health is trending" by Jannesen Observer and with the support of Planner Media, a total of 10 thousand hashtags were monitored in real time over two months, between October 17 and December 18, 2018, of which only 141 of them (1.5% of the total) were related to health.
The study notes that "Twitter is still the social channel to go to in case you want to know urgently what happens in health policies, what content has a role in this or that medical congress, or who’s talking about the latest scientific advances".
Through different information exchange tools, Twitter has managed to continue to lead the way in truthfulness in terms of its content, sync through a single Re tweetthe news can be shared from its original source. Additionally, the way in which the news is viralized to become Trending Topic helps the circulation of more truthful information, although the average duration of each TT is 1 day, on average.
The dissemination of political, social and even entertainment media generate the greatest traffic in this social network. However, we must work to increase the presence of the –trending topics– or hashtags related to eventualities in the health sector.
From the total contents related to health, it can be seen that:
- 30% are related to world days.
- 25% are related to events and congresses.
- 16% talk about impact news.
- 8% talk about health policies.
- 5% relate to awareness campaigns.
- 3.5% about with medical alerts and movements.
Among the 10 hashtags in health topics most used in this period of the study were: #DiaMundiaDelCancerDeMama, #DiaMundialDiscapacidad and #SumateAlRosa.
In recent years social networks have undergone drastic changes. However, Twitter is still the microblogging network where you can find a significant number of serious health professionals who are opinion leaders, as well as a large number of journalists, communicators and specialists who publish their daily opinions.
Despite having been displaced by other networks for a community-level coexistence, it remains the most important tool for news content on the Internet, being one more way in which the digital era brings us closer to health information.
