Introduction
Nurses play a fundamental role in ensuring public health and maintaining the quality of care in the healthcare systems. The image of nursing portrayed in social media can affect public trust in nurses, the professional identity of nurses, and even recruitment and retention in nursing education. Social media has a dominant role in shaping perceptions, making it essential to understand how the nursing profession is represented across these platforms. This study aims to investigate the image of nursing in social media.

Methods
This is a narrative review. Relevant studies were searched in online databases published from 2019 to 2025. In the initial search, 389 articles were identified. After removing 58 duplicates, 331 articles remained, of which 299 were excluded due to their irrelevance to the topic. In the full-text review screening, of the remaining 32 articles, 18 were excluded due to limited focus or lack of conceptual relevance, and 2 were excluded due to low quality. Finally, 12 articles were reviewed.

Results
The thematic analysis of the selected studies revealed five dominant themes regarding the image of nursing in social media:
● Nurses as Heroes: Especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, nurses were portrayed as selfless heroes, risking their lives to care for others. 
● Nurses as Victims: Some studies have emphasized the hardships nurses face in the absence of adequate support systems, presenting them as victims of systemic shortcomings.
● Nurses as Angels: Idealized portrayals of nurses, often emphasizing emotional and compassionate aspects, sometimes distort the scientific and professional identity of nurses.
● Nurses as Jack-of-all-Trades: In this theme, nursing is portrayed in a very general manner, completely ignoring the specialized aspects of the nursing profession.
● Error-Focused Image: This theme shows how the media portrays negative perceptions of nursing errors and undermines public trust.

Conclusion
The review highlights how social media during health crises can shape collective perceptions, either by reinforcing professional values or reducing nursing to symbolic clichés. Although some portrayals in social media have positively affected the public image of nursing, others have perpetuated stereotypes and failed to capture the complexity and scientific foundation of nursing practice. A balanced, evidence-informed representation is needed to accurately reflect nursing’s true role and image. 
This review underlines the need for accurate, respectful, and multidimensional portrayals of nursing in social media. Nurses themselves should be empowered to share their voices and experiences through digital platforms. Promoting media literacy among nurses and encouraging strategic communication can help in reframing the professional image of nursing in alignment with reality and the values of the profession.

Ethical Considerations
Compliance with ethical guidelines
All ethical principles were considered in this study. This is a systematic review study. No experiments were conducted on human or animal samples. Accordingly, there was no need for an ethical code.

Funding
This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Authors' contributions
Conceptualization and design: Maedeh Mortezanasab and Masoud Fallahi Khoshknab; Data collection and literature search: Maedeh Mortezanasab, Mariye Jenabi Ghods, Mahdieh Motie, Banafsheh Ghorbani; quality evaluation and analysis: Maedeh Mortezanasab, Masoud Fallahi- Khoshknab, Narges Arsalani; writing: Maedeh Mortezanasab; Review & editing: Masoud Fallahi -Khoshknab

Conflict of interest
The authors declared no conflict of interest
 

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