Managing medical knowledge flow: Physicians' social media actualisation practices

Area of Science:

• Medical communication
• Digital health
• Public health education

Background:

• Physicians possess clinical expertise ideal for public health education via social media (SM).
• Communicating complex medical information to diverse audiences on SM presents challenges.
• Limited research exists on physicians' strategies for navigating these online communication challenges.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how physicians adapt social media features for effective medical information dissemination.
• To explore the application of affordance actualisation theory in understanding physician online communication.
• To identify key practices physicians employ to bridge the gap between complex medical knowledge and lay audiences.

Main Methods:

• Utilized affordance actualisation theory as the analytical framework.
• Focused on a case study of a prominent physician's social media practices.
• Analyzed the adaptation of social media features for knowledge dissemination.

Main Results:

• Identified two primary social media actualisation practices: balancing knowledge brevity and fidelity, and optimizing features for legal compliance.
• Physicians balance making information accessible (brevity) with ensuring its accuracy (fidelity).
• Physicians leverage social media features to offer clinical insights within legal boundaries.

Conclusions:

• Physicians strategically adapt social media features to manage online medical knowledge flow.
• Effective online medical communication requires balancing accessibility, accuracy, and legal adherence.
• Findings contribute to a theoretical framework for physicians managing knowledge dissemination in digital environments.