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?:abstract
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PURPOSE: To assess the use and impact of the social media platform Twitter during the 2020 American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery (ASCRS) Virtual Meeting. SETTING: Social media platform Twitter.com. DESIGN: Retrospective review. METHODS: Retrospective analysis of Twitter use during the ASCRS Virtual Meeting in May 2020. All tweets and associated metadata pertaining to the conference were compiled starting from when the virtual meeting was announced (April 8, 2020) to 2 weeks post-conference (May 31, 2020). Two coders independently coded all tweets and excluded tweets if they were irrelevant or no longer available. RESULTS: A total of 501 tweets were reviewed. 48.5% of tweets came from private accounts, 23.1% from academic institutions, 14.4% from ASCRS accounts, 12.4% from industry and 1.6% from professional organizations. 29.1% of the tweets were shared before the conference (n=146), 60.5% during (n=303), and 10.4% after the conference (n=52). 62.9% (n=315) of tweets promoted conference events, 27.3% (n=137) were about research studies, 27.1% (n=136) were social posts, 23.0% (n=115) were from industry sponsors, 4.4% (n=22) of tweets were self-promotion, and 1.0% (n=5) were not categorized. Twitter impressions on the ASCRS account increased by 79% in 2020 compared to the 2019 annual meeting. CONCLUSIONS: To the author\'s knowledge, this first study to describe how Twitter users engaged with a virtual ophthalmology meeting through social media during the coronavirus pandemic. Findings from this study offers insight on how the ophthalmology community can use social media during conferences and highlights opportunities for networking through social media for both virtual and in-person conferences in the future.
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