Twitter's role in NHS reforms debate analysed

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Twitter provided an important forum for quick and open discussion about NHS reforms, say researchers at Imperial College London.

The network allowed ?conversations across barriers of hierarchy and profession? and ?may have fostered discussion and collaboration between groups that rarely talk?, according to a study looking at over 120,000 tweets about the Health and Social Care Bill which was recently passed into law in England.

The researchers developed a way to assess how influential individuals or organisations are on Twitter, based on the H-index, a widely-used measure of impact in academia. Their method identified the doctor and writer Ben Goldacre (@bengoldacre) as the most influential tweeter on the subject of the NHS reforms, followed by GP Jonathon Tomlinson (@mellojonny) and the Guardian (@guardian).

http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/newssummary/news_18-3-2013-15-44-44
 
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