Social media analytics

Abstract

Social media has become increasingly relevant for surgeons, trainees, surgical journals, and professional organizations. This article explores the importance of advanced social media analytics, including social media metrics, social graph metrics, and altmetrics, in enhancing information exchange and promoting content in digital surgical communities. Different social media platforms give users access to free analytics, such as Twitter Analytics, Facebook Page Insights, Instagram Insights, LinkedIn Analytics, and YouTube Analytics, and various commercial applications offer advanced metrics and data visualization. Social graph metrics provide insights into a social surgical network's structure and dynamics, helping identify key influencers, communities, trends, or behavior patterns within the network. Altmetrics allow alternative ways to measure the social impact of research beyond traditional citations, including mentions, downloads, and shares on social media platforms. However, ethical issues related to privacy, accuracy, transparency, accountability, and impact on patient care must be considered when using social media analytics.