Nuances of social media in medical journalism
Today, social media is being used aggressively by medical publishers to promote knowledge, spread ideas and create platforms, where they can communicate their message to increase their scope by broadening the readership with a larger population viewing the recent journal articles.
Abstract
No one in today’s era of technology wants to be belonging to past dawns, but wants to move ahead to the noon of the future. Today, social media is being used aggressively by medical publishers to promote knowledge, spread ideas and create platforms, where they can communicate their message. Social media helps guide them to create discussions amongst colleagues and across the globe on latest topics in their fields of medicine. It helps journals increase their scope by broadening the readership with a larger population viewing the recent journal articles. Social media has seen rapid growth in popularity in the last few years. There is widespread use of sites such as facebook and twitter amongst medical journals and a growing number of well‐established blogs and internet forums that are aimed specifically at medical journals such as that for Circulation, British Medical Journal, New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, JCVA etc. Cobwebbed, by the desires to reach the masses, most established as well as upcoming journals, put their best foot forward and leave no stone unturned in putting the journal articles for enhanced viewership. None of them, but don’t realize that further down, there is a trap!! In promoting the journal, we are spending time, energy, money to be seen online and stay hooked on to the social media for very fast journal article updates! But, are we gaining or loosing?