OrthoTwitter: Blending Information, Education, and Entertainment Online

Background: Twitter has become a part of every medical field, including orthopaedics. #OrthoTwitter is the hashtag
commonly used for orthopaedic-related tweets. Researchers have assessed the impact of Twitter in orthopaedics, but no
study has evaluated the individual tweets under #OrthoTwitter. The purpose of the present study was to determine the
nature of the content and interactions under #OrthoTwitter and to analyze the usefulness of #OrthoTwitter. Methods: After a pilot study, an analysis of #OrthoTwitter tweets was conducted from May 1, 2021, to June 30, 2021.Data were extracted in 2 stages. In Stage I, data were manually extracted at 8 P.M. IST (Indian Standard Time) on alternate days. In Stage II, data were collected using the web-scraping tool Octoparse. Data were analyzed on the basis of 3characteristics—topic, purpose, and format of the tweet—with each characteristic comprising 10, 6, and 7 categories,respectively. An association analysis was performed using SPSS software.Results: One thousand and twenty-three tweets were analyzed. Five hundred and fifty-three (54%) of the 1,023 tweets were from orthopaedic surgeons and 123 (12%) were from orthopaedic residents. Medical students aspiring to be orthopaedic surgeons contributed 31 tweets (3%). #OrthoTwitter was also used by non-orthopaedic departments, most frequently radiology. Tweets that were educational or informative were the most common, as compared with tweets of
other purposes. Two hundred and forty-six (24%) of the 1,023 tweets were educational (e.g., discussions of cases or
journals) and 368 (36%) were informative (e.g., conference announcements and advertisements). Notable tweet sub-
categories included those related to COVID-19 (71 tweets; 7%), those of a motivational nature (41 tweets; 4%), and those
containing some type of graphic content (644 tweets; 63%), for the topic, purpose, and format characteristics, respec-
tively. We noted significantly more likes for tweets with an educational purpose (p = 0.017) and for tweets with images
(p < 0.001). We also noted a significant number of retweets of educational tweets (p < 0.001).Conclusions: #OrthoTwitter provides a unique environment in which education, news, collegial interaction, social responsibility, and entertainment thrive, making Twitter a virtual community. Tweets with an educational purpose and those that included images generated more interactions. Orthopaedic surgeons should consider using #OrthoTwitter in their orthopaedic-related tweets for a broader reach.