Social Media : new era - traditional gatekeeper role diminished : gone is the audience as passive vessel for information
In medicine, the gatekeeper has traditionally been the doctor’s office. Research from the Pew Internet & Life Project shows that 61 percent of adults seek health information on line . Active audience : conversation, participation
Hospital Social Media Accounts 540 hospitals – January 2010 227 YouTube 419 Twitter 326 Facebook 67 Blogs Source: ebennett.org/hsnl
What is twitter?
Differentiate Twitter from traditional medai.
The “but why do people want to know what I had for breakfast” tweet/pushback.
Note: verified account – ratio of followers to following – listed number
TweetStats for CDCEmergency shows H1N1 spike
Tweet Stats for CDCEmergency : @ replies and RTs shows type of conversation
RT example : CDCEmergency
Promo Example. The bulk (85 percent) of Mayo Clinic tweets are promotional or links to health-related resources, Aase invites people to submit their questions as tweets using the Mayo Radio hashtag (#mayoradio), both before and during the radio show while it is live.
@Reply Example Be sensitive to answers that shouldn’t be made public and the limits of Twitter’s 140 characters
Crisis Communication Example: In August 2009, two employees of an ABC Disposal Inc.,a household trash transfer station, were rushed to intensive care and another 100 people were sent to Boston-area hospitals after a chemical release.
Promo example Children’s Mercy used Twitter in the operating room as a way to reach the geographically disbursed community that was vested in a young boy’s story
Promo example August 12, 2009, Children’s Mercy handed the hospital’s Twitter account over to Shari Flanagan to tweet before, during and after her daughter, Caity, had surgery for Crohn’s disease
WHY social media as a communications tool? Mobile : ubiquitous