Untangling the Threads: Radiology Profiles and Engagement Opportunities with the Latest Social Media Platform

Purpose: Prior studies have analyzed radiology content on social media platforms such as TikTok, Facebook, and Twitter. Threads, the newest social media application, has yet to be studied in medical literature. We analyzed the top radiology-related profiles on Threads in order to describe opportunities for radiology engagement.

Methods/Materials: All 62 Threads profiles that populated after searching “radiology” were retrieved, with account type and follower count recorded. Six were excluded from analysis due to having a follower count below 5. Profiles were grouped as MD/DO, RN/technologist, physician-in-training, non-licensed educational, private companies, academic institutions, national societies, and memes/photos/news. An independent Kruskal-Wallis test was performed to analyze if follower count differed significantly between groups. A Chi-Square test of equal proportions was performed to analyze distribution across account types. Descriptive statistics were also obtained.

Results: 14 out of the 56 profiles included were run by physicians (25%), 9 by academic institutions (16%), 7 by RNs or techs (12.5%), 7 by non-licensed accounts providing educational content (12.5%), 7 by private practice companies (12.5%), 5 by physicians-in-training (8.9%), 4 by national societies (7.1%), and 3 by profiles dedicated to radiology-related memes, photos and news (5.4%) (Table 1). The median follower count of all profiles was 909 ([IQR]: 173 - 1565), while the mean follower count was 1525 (SD = 1795). Follower count was not found to differ significantly across account types (p = 0.123) (Table 2) and there was no significant difference between observed and expected values (p = 0.110) (Table 3, Figure 1).

Conclusions: MD/DO-accounts made up 25% of all profile types and had the highest mean follower count. Neither the number of MD/DO accounts nor the average follower count differed significantly from other account types, but MD/DO accounts were still most frequent. Licensed radiologists with interest in creating educational content appear to have a captive audience on Threads, presenting opportunities for engagement with patients, healthcare workers, and physicians-in-training.