I have lamented for years that tobacco control advocates don't use social media enough. A comment I just read in the most recent issue of Tobacco Control confirms my assessment and my experience: most of the time, the longer the advocates have been involved in the field, the less inclined they are to use social media. Of course there are exceptions (like Simon Chapman with the Facebook based Global Tobacco Control Network ) but where is the rest? :(
Where are the African leaders/groups on line? on a regular basis? Other exception, LISTAB, the Senegalese blog. You can congratulate Massamba. Yes I helped them launch the blog but they are the ones keeping it alive.
Social media was another hot topic—both the need to monitor tobacco industry activity in social media, and also the need to ensure that tobacco control effectively utilises its potential. There was only one presentation about social media at the previous WCToH, in Mumbai in 2009, which was slotted away with sports sponsorship because it had not seemed to fit in anywhere else. In 2012, the conference had numerous sessions on this rapidly evolving topic. There is still a long way to go, however. In one session, the number of people who used social media was in inverse proportion to the number of years' experience in tobacco control. Clearly, the tobacco control community needs to find a way to effectively bring together expertise in social media and the collective wealth of tobacco control experience.
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