PC2054: Characteristics of the Top 100 Pediatric Influencers on Twitter

Background: Social media platforms, such as Twitter, have emerged as a powerful tool for communication in the 21st century. Although a growing number of pediatricians are using Twitter as a professional medium for health communication, research, mentorship, networking, and education, concerns about the dissemination of false health information on social media persist. Additionally, not much is known about which group of individuals are influencing conversations in the field of pediatrics on social media.

Methods: Twitter topic scores for the topic “pediatrics” were queried on July 4th, 2021, using the Right Relevance Insight API software. The top 100 pediatric influencers were identified based on their Twitter topic scores. Profession, specialty, gender, Twitter verification status, years of experience, and location were collected utilizing Twitter, Doximity, LinkedIn, ResearchGate, and institutional websites. Academic h-index scores were obtained from Scopus. Pearson correlation was performed to examine the relationship between Twitter topic scores, the h-index scores of the pediatricians, and years of experience.

Results: Seventy-five percent of top influencers were trained as pediatricians. Other medical doctors made up another 18% whilst 7% of influencers were non-physicians. Of the pediatricians, 46/75 (61.3%) were females, 34/75 (45%) were Twitter verified, 70/75 (93%) practiced mostly in the United States with 45/71 (63%) practicing primarily in an academic hospital. The academic h-index score of social media influencers ranged from 1 to 88. There was no significant correlation between the Twitter topic score and academic h-index score r = +0.14 (p-value 0.172), nor with years of practice r = +0.12 (p-value 0.264).

Conclusion: Our data characterize the positions, practices, demographics, geographical and Twitter profiles of the top Twitter influencers in the field of Pediatrics. Our results show that the top-ranked pediatrics social media influencers on Twitter are predominantly board-certified female pediatricians physically based in the United States and practicing in academic settings. As the role and importance of social media in medical information dissemination continue to grow, it is crucial that future studies examine the most influential pediatricians on other social media platforms as well as the contents of the posts made by these influencers.