Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Formative Research
Date Submitted: May 29, 2025
Date Accepted: Apr 6, 2026
Utilizing Social Media to Maximize Research Impact in Surgeons: An Exploratory, Linguistic Analysis
ABSTRACT
Background:
Surgeons are working in a progressive field where communicating research is vital as it can allow for sharing the most current research and enable meaningful interactions with clinicians and researchers. It also contributes to societal impact, increasing access to information and reducing misinformation. Yet, the traditional measures of research impact do not account for these types of contributions. Social media enhances this communication and optimizes the research impact of sharing scholarly work and enhancing its process to clinical practice, but little is known about how to design specific posts with respect to the language used for the greatest research impact.
Objective:
The purpose of this retrospective observational study was to evaluate posts shared through Twitter/X to determine the best linguistic cues for optimizing research impact amongst surgeons, which tend to be overlooked with respect to social media research.
Methods:
A retrospective observational study was conducted to evaluate the linguistic cues utilized in tweets sharing scholarly activity by 17 of the most followed surgeons on Twitter. The linguistic cues of the tweets were measured on a continuous scale converted from percentages of each linguistic cue used in the text, and subsequently, a regression analysis was conducted to determine which cues influenced research impact.
Results:
Of the 84 eligible tweets, they were highly analytic (M=94.77, S.D.=9.00), moderate in clout (M=42.69, S.D. 19.84), low in tone (M=20.06, S.D.= 33.91), and low in authenticity (M=19.52, S.D.=24.50). Results suggest that a high use of formal language negatively impacts readership and citations. Tweets associated with analytical language indirectly affected readership (????=-.296, p=.01) and citations (????=.52, p<.001). Tweets associated with clout had a positive effect on readership (????=.26, p=.03), and tweets associated with tone experienced a negative effect on readership (????=-0.317, p=0.04). Negative language was found to increase the impact of research.
Conclusions:
With the use of language to which the social media audience may be the most receptive, the medical field has the opportunity to expand its impact and encourage conversation between scientists and the public spheres, allowing for increased scientific and societal contribution. Clinical Trial: NA
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