TY - JOUR T1 - Death by social networking: the rising prominence of social media in the palliative care setting JF - BMJ Supportive & Palliative Care JO - BMJ Support Palliat Care SP - 2 LP - 3 DO - 10.1136/bmjspcare-2013-000607 VL - 4 IS - 1 AU - Kate Granger Y1 - 2014/03/01 UR - http://spcare.bmj.com/content/4/1/2.abstract N2 - How has society changed over recent years? The widespread mass use of social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook is one huge and very visible transformation. The conversations that once occurred in the schoolyard or at work coffee breaks are now happening on-line. However, what about those conversations with deeper connotations about more serious issues, for example, about death and dying? Could conversations about these emotive topics move to the world of social media successfully as well? Could social media even promote and facilitate these conversations which are usually so difficult to commence? In their Feature piece Palliative Social Media, Taubert et al1 try to sift through the many intricacies of how social media may get us talking more about dying and death. As a patient with a rare and incurable intra-abdominal sarcoma, I have become an avid exponent of social media, in particular of the microblogging platform Twitter. I intend to tweet for as long as I possibly can, sharing my experiences, in an attempt to open up much needed dialogue in society about the end of … ER -