Using Social Media for Health Policy

The National Research Council recently expressed concern regarding whether scientific evidence is adequately communicated into policymakers and subsequently adopted into public policy. Thus, the communication gap between researchers and policymakers needs to be narrowed to promote policies that are informed and backed by scientific evidence.  

A recent study sought to examine the use of social media to convey information to policymakers and to gauge researchers’ perceptions of using social media to do so [Health Affairs. 2014; DOI:10.1377/hlthaff.2014.0300].

According to the researchers, social media represents an expanding tool to facilitate communication of scientific evidence to policymakers. Twitter is already a growing facilitator of information, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention regularly disseminates public health information on Twitter to thousands of followers. Little is known, however, about researchers’ attitudes toward using social media for information dissemination.

The study was conducted via a mixed-methods survey that included an experimental component. The survey was administered in person in June 2013 as both a structured and semistructured interview with both open- and closed-ended questions. The respondents were 215 health services and health policy researchers recruited from a random sample of 325 people who had preregistered for the 2013
AcademyHealth Annual Research Meeting, which is the largest gathering of US health policy researchers. Study participants were entered into a raffle for a gift card for their contributions.

The researchers’ attitudes toward social media were measured in 3 ways: (1) respondents were presented with vignettes that described researchers who published their study via different modes of dissemination; (2) the participants were asked to rate the efficacy of 8 channels to communicate specifically with policymakers and other decision-makers; and (3) open-ended qualitative questions were presented on how researchers should be using social media, if at all, to disseminate their work.

Additionally, the researchers measured respondents’ reported frequency of dissemination behaviors.
In terms of the vignettes measured, the participants rated traditional media (ie, articles in newspapers and journals) and direct outreach to policymakers (ie, directly contacting policymakers and issuing policy briefs from an academic center or institute) as favorable methods of dissemination. The respondents rated dissemination through social media as neutral in terms of confidence, peer respect, and academic promotion. Social media (ie, Twitter, Facebook, and blogs on journal Web sites) ranked below the other 2 methods of dissemination in terms of overall impression but was evaluated almost as favorably as the other 2 in terms of efficacy.

In addition, the researchers found that senior faculty members considered social media less favorably than junior faculty. Higher academic rank was associated with less favorable attitudes toward Twitter (P=.02), blogs on journal Web sites (P=.03), and newspaper articles (P=.03).

Most of the participants (≥65%) reported using traditional media or direct outreach to disseminate information in years prior. Just 14% reported tweeting and 21% reported blogging about their research. Higher academic rank was associated with higher rates of publishing policy briefs (P=.01), contacting interest or community groups (P=.03), having the news media cover a study (P=.04), and being interviewed by a reporter (P<.001).

In terms of open-ended responses on the participants’ views of social media, the following themes were identified. Participants noted social media’s technical limitations and the quality of communication. Many respondents were very critical of the perceived subjectivity in the social media environment. Also, many study participants believed that researchers are critical of social media. One participant noted that using social media could appear to advocate and self-promote, which is inconsistent with academic norms.

Other responses garnered included fear in making a mistake on social media, keeping up with changing social media technology, and confusion regarding how to properly convey information via social media tools.

The researchers noted limitations of the study. The participants recruited were attending a meeting and may not be representative of university researchers as a whole. Also, the study relied on self-reports to measure behavior, which leads to potential recall bias.

The authors concluded that determining how health researchers can best use and adapt the social media technology to communicate evidence to policymakers should be a priority for universities, research funders, and scientists.—Kerri Fitzgerald