Social media (SoMe) is increasingly used in higher education (HE) to access knowledge and enable global communication. The SoMe platform Twitter(®) is particularly beneficial in these contexts because it is readily accessible, easily searchable (via hashtags) and global. Given these advantages, the twitter platform @AskAnatomist was created to foster a global weekly tweet chat, where students and academics from can ask and address anatomy-related questions. The aim of this study was to identify themes arising in the early stages of the @AskAnatomy Twitter community to gain insights into current needs/key areas for academic anatomists, students, and other followers. A qualitative analysis of tweets including the hashtag #AnatQ, (the associated @AskAnatomist hashtag), was undertaken to achieve this aim. Thematic analysis revealed three core themes arising in the formative stages of the @AskAnatomist Twitter site: (1) anatomical education modalities, (2) specific anatomy content, and (3) research motivations. These themes reveal controversies within the field of anatomical sciences, areas for potential education resource improvement and research, as well as the humor of anatomists. Though the original intent of the @AskAnatomist site was to engage the general public in anatomy content and knowledge, tweet analysis suggests that academic anatomists were the primary active "tweeters". Interestingly, this analysis reveals that the @AskAnatomist site progressed into a web-based community of practice (CoP), suggesting an additional benefit of SoMe communities in the field of anatomy.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 15. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 26 June 2023.
All research outputs
#2,577,029
of 26,733,946 outputs
Outputs from Anatomical Sciences Education
#76
of 777 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#45,678
of 335,545 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Anatomical Sciences Education
#2
of 19 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 26,733,946 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 90th percentile: it's in the top 10% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 777 research outputs from this source. They typically receive more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 9.2. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 90% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 335,545 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done well, scoring higher than 86% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 19 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 89% of its contemporaries.
