‘Can’t be in 10 places at once’: Social media now a key part of rheumatology meetings
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COVID-19 was in so many ways an inflection point for nearly all aspects of health care, with one of the most conspicuous, continuing examples of “pre-2020” differing from “post-2020” being the way people consume data from meetings.
And although the question regarding the continued use of remote attendance for these meetings is still being debated — with large associations either opting for a hybrid format or, in the case of EULAR, ditching digital altogether — what is far less unclear is the impact that social media has had for both attendees and organizers.
As the COVID-19 pandemic pushed many traditional medical institutions to a point where most interactions and exchanges occurred entirely online, more rheumatologists began taking to social media — most notably Twitter — to post live updates during meetings.
“The only medium of engagement or networking during the beginning of the pandemic was virtual networking, so I saw an explosion of colleagues of all generations beginning to engage with meeting content and other conference attendees on social media,” Laura Lewandowski, MD, MS, an assistant clinical investigator and head of the Lupus Genomics and Global Health Disparities Unit at the NIH, told Healio. “The pandemic was challenging in many ways, but it was exciting to see social media engagement grow, and it happened organically.”
Although the existence of “rheum Twitter” predates the pandemic, this “explosion” in Twitter and social media use around large meetings has been difficult to ignore. Jean Liew, MD, MS, a rheumatologist and clinical researcher at Boston University who has been tweeting under the username @rheum_cat since before the COVID-19 pandemic, with now more than 6,300 followers, also noticed the online community growth.
“I was doing a ton of tweeting at ACR already before the pandemic,” Liew told Healio. “Of course, once the pandemic made meetings completely virtual, because more people were flocking to social media to connect, it just meant I did more of what I was doing before.”
For Michael Putman, MD, MSci, of the Medical College of Wisconsin, another longtime regular contributor to the rheum Twitter community — with nearly 7,400 followers — the line separating pre- and post-pandemic social media activity around meetings has been clear.
According to Putman, not many people were tweeting about the American College of Rheumatology’s annual meeting prior to the push for remote attendance during the pandemic. However, Twitter is now noticeably more active in the weeks around big meetings, he added.
“I think there are just so many more people generating content and so many more people interacting with it,” Putman said.
That said, social media acts as a tool for rheumatologists who attend meetings in person just as much as it does for those who were unable to travel to certain meetings. Beyond the practicality of employing the technology during meetings themselves, it also offers a space for networking and communication among rheumatologists.
Help with being social
Social media sites such as Twitter can be troublesome, but often the benefits can outweigh the potential drawbacks, according to Putman.
“My general goal is to just try to make sure that I am getting all of the good things related to social media use and try to minimize the potential bad consequences,” he said.
Putman got his start on rheum Twitter in 2018, when he began to tweet slides, as well as some thoughts on the presentations, from meetings. The result was a lot of engagement and interaction — which has not slowed down.
One of the main selling points for medical meetings is the opportunity they offer for physicians and researchers to connect, exchange ideas and network. For some people, the sheer size of the big annual meetings hosted by the ACR and EULAR can be intimidating. According to Liew, social media has given these physicians the opportunity to connect before the meetings.
“Because I’ve interacted with a wider range of people through Twitter, it’s made networking at meetings a lot easier,” Liew said. “I am very introverted and will not be the kind of person to strike up a conversation with a stranger — especially not at a large, overwhelming meeting.
“If you’ve gotten to know someone online, it’s easier to start talking to them once you meet them in person, so instead of sitting in the corner with my notebook at the meeting, I’m more likely to at least say ‘hi’ to people,” she added.
In addition to acting as an icebreaker, social media has facilitated networking and helped relationships to flourish even in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Putman, social media was used as a kind of gathering point for rheumatologists when in-person meetings were out of the question.
“A lot of the networking I have done on Twitter has formed the basis of friendships in real life,” he said, adding that he had planned to meet with those friends from Twitter during the 2022 ACR Convergence meeting in Philadelphia.
Social media has allowed physicians to connect before and during meetings, but it has also become integral to the ways physicians interact with the meetings themselves.
The ‘overwhelming’ meeting
It is not uncommon for large medical meetings to have multiple halls and stages where presentations and talks are occurring simultaneously, which can make scheduling one’s time difficult for attendees. It can be challenging — and at times impossible — to see everything that one wants to see.
“Even if you are attending the meeting in person, you can’t see everything that might be interesting to you,” Liew said.
Social media does not solve this problem, but it can provide a way for some attendees to remain up to date with the proceedings despite the packed schedule.
For example, a healthy and ongoing meeting conversation on Twitter can offer the opportunity to take in other attendee’s thoughts on the sessions that were difficult to attend.
“You truly can’t be in 10 places at once, but Twitter kind of makes you feel like you could be,” Putman said.
However, this strategy, which at times can result in near-constant social media use during the meeting, can increase the likelihood that attendees may feel a bit scatterbrained as they attempt to keep up with the conversation online while also trying to be present for a session.
The solution, according to Lewandowski, remains careful planning.
“I learn about programming earlier, as many societies and groups preview content leading up to the meeting,” Lewandowski said. “I am aware of a broader scope of meeting content.”
She added that the ability to connect with meeting content in advance allows her to better plan for the content.
Liew agreed, adding that her preparation for ACR Convergence 2022 began nearly 2 months before the start of the meeting.
“The program can be very overwhelming at large meetings like ACR,” Liew said. “For ACR this year, as soon as the abstracts were available online in late September, I started sorting through them, saving them and taking notes.”
Engaging ‘more deeply but also more broadly’
Liew’s and Putman’s preparation for — and social media use during — ACR Convergence has recently taken on a whole new dimension, as they have both — along with 32 other rheumatologists this year — served as official “Twitter ambassadors” for the meeting. According to ACR, these ambassadors help build awareness of the meeting while increasing engagement among members of the global rheumatology community. Throughout the meeting, they could be seen sharing events and session information, as well as crucial data and conclusions from the presentations.
“Since I started tweeting medical meetings, I’ve refined my role as someone who disseminates science presented and discussed at the meetings to a wider audience,” Liew said. “Tweeting about a talk or a study draws more attention to it and in the end, more people get to hear about the science.”
Liew added that she takes the role seriously, and often tries to diversify the topics that she tweets about. To prepare for the tweets that go out during the meeting, Liew reviews and studies abstracts before meetings begin to ensure there is no miscommunication or misinformation, she said.
“I engage more deeply but also more broadly,” Liew said. “I think the way I used to attend meetings before was really superficial compared to now, and I was a much more passive consumer of knowledge.”
According to Lewandowski, these efforts have the impact of allowing others to interact with meetings in ways that would otherwise be impossible.
“I interact with other people in real time in the sessions I attend, but I also interact with people via social media, both for sessions I am able to attend and those I miss,” she said. “Some of my colleagues are really adept at hitting the highlights of a talk, so I can make a note to go back and watch the session or access the study presented.”
In addition to impacting the way rheumatologists engage with meetings, social media has also played an important role in the way meetings function.
David McLain, MD, executive director of Alabama Society for the Rheumatic Diseases and symposium director of the Congress of Clinical Rheumatology (CCR), explained that the internet and social media discussions have broadened CCR’s reach and resulted in an increase in international attendees.
“With social media, we have more international interest,” McLain said. “We have had 17 countries represented this year.”
In addition, there is a specific Facebook group that discusses the meetings, while ads and posts on various other social media sites have also helped to bolster interest, according to McLain.
Providing more access
Although the rheumatology community on Twitter has grown in recent years, it is far from reaching its ceiling, according to Liew.
“I know for every person who tweets at least a few times during the meeting, there are plenty who don’t know about our vibrant online community or have reasons to not join it,” she said. “We shouldn’t rest on our laurels but continue to refine what we do and try to get others to join in, if possible.”
Liew added that social media will likely have a place in meeting discourse moving forward, even if the use of other technologies, like live remote attendance, fall by the wayside.
“It’s definitely here to stay,” Liew said. “It’s not a pandemic thing, but it’s grown and changed with the pandemic.”
And as more meetings return to exclusively in-person formats, the role of social media will likely continue to grow and be an important complement to virtual meeting platforms. However, Liew stressed that social media activity can only act as a “compliment” to the meeting, and cannot be a substitute for guaranteeing accessibility for people who are unable to attend meetings in person.
“Rather than relying on conference attendees voluntarily tweeting the meeting content for those who aren’t able to join, I am strongly encouraging the conference organizers to think of more equitable but cost-efficient ways to provide more access,” Liew said. “It’s of course still not equitable to provide on demand videos only without livestream or interaction with speakers, but it’s at least something.
“The social media content can only complement having the meeting content available,” she added.
For Lewandowski, as social media content continues to evolve, so too will conference formats.
“It will be interesting to see what happens with the synergy of these ways of presenting and distributing information over the next 5 to 10 years,” she said.
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