Open AccessACC .20: Impact of social media at the virtual scientific sessions during the COVID ‐19 pandemic
Author(s) -
Mackenzie Graham,
Gulati Martha
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
clinical cardiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.263
H-Index - 72
eISSN - 1932-8737
pISSN - 0160-9289
DOI - 10.1002/clc.23387
Subject(s) - session (web analytics) , social media , covid-19 , medicine , pandemic , event (particle physics) , medical education , visibility , social distance , social activity , world wide web , psychology , computer science , disease , social psychology , physics , quantum mechanics , outbreak , infectious disease (medical specialty) , optics , virology
Background The COVID‐19 pandemic led to the American College of Cardiology (ACC) Annual Scientific Session 2020 (ACC.20) being held as a virtual event. Hypothesis Social media activity around a virtual event might be quite different to that of a physical meeting. The goal of this study was to assess impact of ACC.20 through Twitter and compare it to ACC.19. Methods Data were extracted using NodeXL, with analysis in Excel. Results ACC.20‐related tweeting was demonstrated globally. However tweeting and participants fell substantially for ACC.20. Tweeting, participation and tweet views were overestimated by the most widely used social media analysis tool used at medical conferences (Symplur). Conclusion Comparing the 2019 and 2020 Scientific Sessions, the global cardiology community continued to communicate despite COVID‐19, but with reduced social media activity potentially due to the briefer format, no physical interaction and private virtual chatroom during live sessions, reducing visibility of new cardiology research findings.