RESOURCE: The terror of tweeting: social medium or academic message?
To me this is a peculiar kind of technological confusion. If we ban live tweeting, do we also ban conversations about a paper in the lunch queue or the bar? If people really are anxious about tweeting or blogging, because it might reveal too much about them or their work, does that mean that they don’t talk to their colleagues over coffee, whether about research or the latest gossip?
To focus our anxiety on the technology is to ignore its function: the simple art of communicating and connecting with other people, and the pleasure of doing so. If an academic can talk to a colleague or a friend, they already know how and why to tweet. No further guidance is necessary.
Written by Brian S McGowan, PhD
Dr. McGowan has served in leadership positions in numerous medical educational organizations and commercial supporters and is a Fellow of the Alliance (FACEhp). He founded the Outcomes Standardization Project, launched and hosted the Alliance Podcast, and most recently launched and hosts the JCEHP Emerging Best Practices in CPD podcast. In 2012 he Co-Founded ArcheMedX, Inc, a healthcare informatics and e-learning company to apply his research in practice.
