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Should I Tweet You My Question?
Editorial
Should I Tweet You My Question? uring the American College of Nurse Practitioners’ Public Policy Institute, one of the NP presenters took time during her presentation to send comments to those who follow her on Twitter. Gone are the days when a speaker makes a presentation and then wonders if the audience got their message. People sitting in the audience could send electronic feedback about what they heard both to the speaker and to their own Twitter followers mere seconds after the words left the speaker’s mouth. This new technology opens whole new dimensions of professional communication. The ACNP speaker believed that Twitter and Facebook are not only helpful but that presenters now have a responsibility to use social media to help communicate faster and more broadly to others. Those who do not essentially waste an opportunity to more broadly share the messages they have worked hard to prepare. The Public Policy Institute was held in February 2011. I have been brooding about these ideas ever since. The notion that some individuals are a little “behind the times” seems at war with the fact that some people are more modest or reticent about what they say and to whom they will say it. Having a following of several hundred or several thousand people with whom you “share” your presentation or your thoughts whenever you have them may seem a little presumptuous to some. I suspect that the response to open online communications is generational, with younger individuals more likely to participate in this type of correspondence. JNP has a broad age span of readers. We wonder whether we should consider having a Facebook Page or use Twitter to announce important findings of articles published in JNP and thus invite more dynamic communication between authors and readers. We are not the only journal puzzling over this decision. An editor of The Lancet found that 60% of their subscribers are over 50, while 80% of the people on Facebook and Twitter are younger than 50. Publishers of medical journals overall have found that 60% of subscribers prefer hard copies of the journals they read, while 40% prefer electronic versions only. The numbers who want access to both hard and electronic versions of a journal are growing. The more millennials—young people now entering the market—that subscribe to the journal, the more the push for electronic access, so the characteristics and age of the readership are going to drive the mode of presentation over time. JNP’s Point/Counterpoint, which runs in every issue, invites readers to vote on the column’s topic at www.npjournal.org. Each issue offers online and mail-in continuing education activities. Additional CE offerings and webcasts are offered to NPs in conjunction with other Elsevier journals or professions on the journal homepage. JNP also has online collections of articles on such topics as respiratory care, pulmonary disease, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, or obesity to facilitate clinical study and research. We monitor the use of these electronic offerings to see whether these types of activities or other forms of electronic communication should be expanded. What additional methods we offer will depend on reader response. Please visit the homepage often so we can gauge your interest in various features.
D
Marilyn W. Edmunds PhD, NP
Marilyn W. Edmunds, PhD, NP 1555-4155/11/$ see front matter © 2011 American College of Nurse Practitioners doi: 10.1016/j.nurpra.2011.08.006
706
The Journal for Nurse Practitioners - JNP
Editor in Chief
Volume 7, Issue 9, October 2011
Should I Tweet You My Question? uring the American College of Nurse Practitioners’ Public Policy Institute, one of the NP presenters took time during her presentation to send comments to those who follow her on Twitter. Gone are the days when a speaker makes a presentation and then wonders if the audience got their message. People sitting in the audience could send electronic feedback about what they heard both to the speaker and to their own Twitter followers mere seconds after the words left the speaker’s mouth. This new technology opens whole new dimensions of professional communication. The ACNP speaker believed that Twitter and Facebook are not only helpful but that presenters now have a responsibility to use social media to help communicate faster and more broadly to others. Those who do not essentially waste an opportunity to more broadly share the messages they have worked hard to prepare. The Public Policy Institute was held in February 2011. I have been brooding about these ideas ever since. The notion that some individuals are a little “behind the times” seems at war with the fact that some people are more modest or reticent about what they say and to whom they will say it. Having a following of several hundred or several thousand people with whom you “share” your presentation or your thoughts whenever you have them may seem a little presumptuous to some. I suspect that the response to open online communications is generational, with younger individuals more likely to participate in this type of correspondence. JNP has a broad age span of readers. We wonder whether we should consider having a Facebook Page or use Twitter to announce important findings of articles published in JNP and thus invite more dynamic communication between authors and readers. We are not the only journal puzzling over this decision. An editor of The Lancet found that 60% of their subscribers are over 50, while 80% of the people on Facebook and Twitter are younger than 50. Publishers of medical journals overall have found that 60% of subscribers prefer hard copies of the journals they read, while 40% prefer electronic versions only. The numbers who want access to both hard and electronic versions of a journal are growing. The more millennials—young people now entering the market—that subscribe to the journal, the more the push for electronic access, so the characteristics and age of the readership are going to drive the mode of presentation over time. JNP’s Point/Counterpoint, which runs in every issue, invites readers to vote on the column’s topic at www.npjournal.org. Each issue offers online and mail-in continuing education activities. Additional CE offerings and webcasts are offered to NPs in conjunction with other Elsevier journals or professions on the journal homepage. JNP also has online collections of articles on such topics as respiratory care, pulmonary disease, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, or obesity to facilitate clinical study and research. We monitor the use of these electronic offerings to see whether these types of activities or other forms of electronic communication should be expanded. What additional methods we offer will depend on reader response. Please visit the homepage often so we can gauge your interest in various features.
D
Marilyn W. Edmunds PhD, NP
Marilyn W. Edmunds, PhD, NP 1555-4155/11/$ see front matter © 2011 American College of Nurse Practitioners doi: 10.1016/j.nurpra.2011.08.006
706
The Journal for Nurse Practitioners - JNP
Editor in Chief
Volume 7, Issue 9, October 2011