This is an open access article under the terms of a license that permits non-commercial use, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2023 The Authors. Société Internationale d'Urologie Journal, published by the Société Internationale d'Urologie, Canada. Key Words Competing Interests Article Information Guidelines, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, podcast, YouTube, urology None declared. Received on, December 3, 2022 Accepted on, January 25, 2023 This article has been peer reviewed. Soc Int Urol J. 2023;4(2):136–138 DOI: 10.48083/RBAZ4307 Novel Methods of Social Media Dissemination in Urology Nikita R. Bhatt,Nikita R. Bhatt,11 Jeremy Yuen-Chun Teoh, Jeremy Yuen-Chun Teoh,22 Vito Cucchiara, Vito Cucchiara,33 Esther Garcia Rojo, Esther Garcia Rojo,44 Claudia Mercader, Claudia Mercader,55 Benjamin Pradere,Benjamin Pradere,66 Maria J. Ribal, Maria J. Ribal,55 Gianluca Giannarini Gianluca Giannarini77; EAU Guidelines Office Dissemination Committee; EAU Guidelines Office Dissemination Committee 1Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, Norwich, United Kingdom 2Department of Surgery, S.H. Ho Urology Centre, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong 3Department of Urology, Division of Experimental Oncology, Urological Research Institute, Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, IRCCS San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Milan, Italy 4Department of Urology, Hospital HM Sanchinarro, Madrid, Spain 5Uro-Oncology Unit, Hospital Clinic, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain 6Department of Urology-UROSUD, La Croix du Sud Hôpital, Quint Fonsegrives, France 7Urology Unit, Santa Maria della Misericordia University Hospital, Udine, Italy Abstract Social Media (SoMe) platforms are widely used by urologists with over 99% using SoMe and 63% of young urologists rating the influence of SoMe on knowledge acquisition as moderate to high. The urology community is abreast with the SoMe revolution in many ways but several new methods of SoMe dissemination remain to be explored. These provide an exciting future for SoMe enthusiasts in urology and beyond. In this article, the European Association of Urology Dissemination Committee explores these novel methods of SoMe dissemination while discussing the importance of maintaining quality, ethics, and reliability in SoMe and the role EAU plays in it. Social media (SoMe) has become an integral part of our personal and professional lives. Urology as a specialty has embraced SoMe enthusiastically over the years, with a large presence on well-known SoMe platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube[1]. These platforms are widely used by urologists, with over 99% using SoMe and 63% of young urologists rating the influence of SoMe on knowledge acquisition as moderate to high[2]. This has paved the way for several novel platforms in recent times including Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok. These platforms have a prominent audiovisual component and have altered the way we share content on SoMe. TikTok involves sharing 15-second videos and is one of the fastest-growing SoMe platforms with over 1.1 billion active users worldwide. The hashtags #urology and #urologist have 411.7 and 68.4 million views, respectively, on TikTok[3]. Similarly, #urology on Instagram revealed 324K posts. Videos on these platforms are most commonly published by physicians, but news media, independent users, and patients can also contribute to the videos. LinkedIn is a well-established online platform with an aim to improve networking among professionals, with several professional bodies and guideline associations having an online presence on LinkedIn—for example, the European Association of Urology (EAU) and the American Urological Association (AUA). Existing platforms such as Twitter and Instagram are also constantly reinventing themselves to keep up with the changing face of SoMe. Reels are short videos, ranging from 90 seconds on Instagram to 2 minutes on Twitter, that provide descriptive and visually engaging content. Twitter Space allows you to have audio conversations live with up to 10 speakers and even record them. This would be a useful platform to have small journal clubs or in-depth educational discussions including guidelines and new evidence. Instagram has recently introduced a subscription feature on a trial basis as part of the “Precision SoMe Content,” the idea behind which is to utilize specific platforms to disseminate personalized and exclusive content to subscribed users[4]. Caffeine and Twitch are SoMe platforms that allow live video broadcast that can also be used by journals, guideline associations, and congresses around the world. After the COVID-19 pandemic, most congresses are using a hybrid approach to engage remote audiences. 136 SIUJ • Volume 4, Number 2 • March 2023 SIUJ.ORG BRIEF COMMUNICATION mailto:nikitarb89%40gmail.com?subject= http://SIUJ.org SoMe platforms play a key role in remote engagement through live tweeting, session broadcast, and interviews. One such example is EAU TV during the EAU congress each year, which discusses highlights from the congress with experts in the field. Podcasts have revolutionized dissemination of educa- tional content, by providing an on-the-go option for content that is convenient and free. A search for urol- ogy podcasts on Google Play returned over 75 relevant podcast channels. These include a range of urological association podcasts such as the EAU guidelines podcasts discussing guidelines with the panel members[4], AUA and British Association of Urological Surgeons podcasts; journal podcasts, for example, Journal of Urology, Brit- ish Journal of Urology International and its knowledge platform (BJUI Knowledge); and educational podcasts, for example, GU Cast, The Urology Doc Podcast, and EMPIRE Urology. Podcasts also improve patient engage- ment by providing reliable patient education on urology health issues, such as the Urology Care Podcast by the AUA. YouTube is host to several urology videos, ranging from educational and surgical videos to patient informa- tion videos. A recent survey suggested that more than any other resource, YouTube is the most used professional platform for urologists and young urologists for learning surgical skills[5]. In addition to newer platforms, newer methods of disseminating content on existing platforms has been explored and successfully implemented. The EAU Guidelines Office as a pioneer of SoMe for dissemination of its world-renowned guidelines, used in 75 countries around the world, has used “awareness days campaign” to engage patients and their advocates[1,6,7]. By dissem- inating relevant EAU guidelines on awareness days, for example, prostate cancer screening during Movember engagement and a separate patient information account (EAU Patient Information), the EAU Dissemination Committee has made a conscious effort to improve patient engagement. The Dissemination Committee has also implemented Urology Cheat Sheets to format the guidelines into the schematic and practical format, thereby improving uptake. These sheets serve as an easy-to-digest educational resource for residents and clinicians looking for a prompt update of their clinical practice. Additionally, the sheets are currently receiving significant social media engagement, with an average of 30 000 impressions on Twitter alone. Posts promoting Abbreviations AUA American Urological Association EAU European Association of Urology SoMe social media the EAU Guidelines Cheat Sheets were among the ones with the highest impact launched from the official EAU account (@uroweb) in 2021 and 2022. SoMe is a brilliant tool for education, patient engage- ment, and networking. It has its drawbacks in terms of sharing of misinformation on both old and new plat- forms. Of 55 TikTok videos with the hashtag #prostate- cancer, 98.2% were of moderate to poor quality, 41% of them contained a significant amount of misinformation, and 10.1% of all videos had an apparent commercial bias[8]. These videos had accumulated 134 944 individ- ual views. The EAU previously published a guideline on the use of SoMe to assist clinicians[9]. To strengthen our commitment to ethical application and utiliza- tion of SoMe within urology and the wider healthcare community, the Dissemination Committee is drafting a new Guideline Chapter on SoMe utilization in health- care[7]. The chapter provides a layout of the SoMe plat- forms available and their potential benefits, in addition to an in-depth manual for using SoMe as a healthcare professional, with several strategies to abide by if one is active on SoMe in a professional capacity—for example, avoiding defamatory comments, knowing your employ- er’s policies on SoMe, and avoiding self-promotion or advertisement[1]. The Guideline Chapter provides guid- ance on appropriate use of SoMe analytics to ensure good engagement such as the effective use of hashtags. It also describes the current scale of the issue with SoMe misinformation and ways of investigating misinfor- mation such as the DISCERN scoring system to assess quality of information in videos and the Certificate of quality Health on the Net Foundation Code of Conduct (HONcode) to standardize the quality of medical infor- mation on the internet, among others. Suggestions are provided on combating misinformation by promoting information from reliable sources such as professional bodies or guidelines, and appropriately qualifying the content using tools such as Patient Education PEMAT Audio Visual tools and Global Quality Score (GQS), among others. In conclusion, the urology community is abreast with the SoMe revolution in many ways, but several new methods of SoMe dissemination remain to be explored. These provide an exciting future for SoMe enthusiasts in urology and beyond. It is vital to ensure quality, ethics, and reliability are at the heart of our SoMe journey, and as such investigating the content online and auditing it will help us improve the content we disseminate. The EAU Dissemination Committee guidelines on SoMe will provide a much-needed etiquette for SoMe dissemina- tion in the near future. 137SIUJ.ORG SIUJ • Volume 4, Number 2 • March 2023 Novel Methods of Social Media Dissemination in Urology https://twitter.com/search?q=%40uroweb&src=typed_query http://SIUJ.org References 1. Pradere B, Esperto F, van Oort IM, Bhatt NR, Czarniecki SW, van Gurp M, et al.; European Association of Urology Guidelines Office Dissemination Committee. Dissemination of the European Association of Urology Guidelines through social media: strategy, results, and future developments. Eur Urol Focus.2022;8(5):1541–1544. doi: 10.1016/j.euf.2021.10.010. PMID: 34774465. 2. Rivas JG, Socarrás MR, Blanco LT. Social media in urology: opportunities, applications, appropriate use and new horizons. Cent European J Urol.2016;69(3):293–298. doi: 10.5173/ceju.2016.848. PMID: 27729998; PMCID: PMC5057055. 3. Teoh J Y- C, C acciamani GE, Gómez Rivas J. Social media and misinfor mation in urolog y : w hat c an be done? BJU Int.2021;128(4):397. doi: 10.1111/bju.15517. PMID: 34581477. 4. Bhatt NR, Pradere B, Teoh JY, Cucchiara V, Czarniecki SW, Esperto F, et al.; EAU Guidelines Office Dissemination Committee. Navigating the next wave of social media: future plans to boost dissemination of the European Association of Urology Guidelines. Eur Urol.2022;81(1):3–4. doi: 10.1016/j.eururo.2021.10.002. PMID: 34740502. 5. Rivas JG, Socarras MR, Patruno G, Uvin P, Esperto F, Dinis PJ, et al. Perceived role of social media in urologic knowledge acquisition among young urologists: a European survey. Eur Urol Focus.2018;4(5):768– 773. doi: 10.1016/j.euf.2016.11.010. PMID: 28753825. 6. Teoh JY, Bhatt NR, Cucchiara V, Garcia Rojo E, Pradere B, Borgmann H, et al.; European Association of Urology Guidelines Office Dissemination Committee. The power of hashtags in social media: lessons learnt from the Urology Tag Ontology Project. Eur Urol Focus.2022;8(6):1565–1567. doi: 10.1016/j.euf.2022.05.002. PMID: 35668025. 7. Bhatt NR, Czarniecki SW, Borgmann H, van Oort IM, Esperto F, Pradere B, et al.; EAU Guidelines Office Dissemination Committee. A systematic review of the use of social media for dissemination of clinical practice guidelines. Eur Urol Focus.2021;7(5):1195–1204. doi: 10.1016/j.euf.2020.10.008. PMID: 33172773. 8. Xu AJ, Taylor J, Gao T, Mihalcea R, Perez-Rosas V, Loeb S. TikTok and prostate cancer: misinformation and quality of information using validated questionnaires. BJU Int.2021;128(4):435–437. doi: 10.1111/ bju.15403. PMID: 33811424. 9. Taylor J, Loeb S. Guideline of guidelines: social media in urology. BJU Int.2020;125(3):379–382. doi: 10.1111/bju.14931. PMID: 31631471. 138 SIUJ • Volume 4, Number 2 • March 2023 SIUJ.ORG BRIEF COMMUNICATION http://SIUJ.org