Objectives Women with breast cancer share their experiences and emotions about the illness on Instagram – a tool understudied when it comes to chronic illness. The paper characterizes the women's activities, and both online self-disclosure and social sharing of emotions concepts are used to help explain the women's practices. Methods Using qualitative conventional content analysis, four profiles of women are manually analysed, with posts as the unit of analysis ( n  =  811). Based on eleven subcategories, three broad analytical categories are introduced: self-disclosure of negative information (C1), self-disclosure of positive information (C2) and disclosure of information about other people (C3). Results The women post narratives about suffering resulting from cancer, and the fears they experience. Also, the posts relate to positive emotions, joyful life events, self-acceptance, or self-affirmation. While writing, the women share information about people supporting them on their way to recovery. Discussion The activity of women cannot be explained only by their online self-disclosure, where anonymity and lack of offline support are often emphasized. Women on Instagram are not anonymous and report on support by relatives and other people. Rimé's concept of social sharing of emotions is used to explain this phenomenon.

The presented paper characterizes TikTok practices of users with cancer and uses notions of social media as positive culture (presenting oneself without undesirable traits) and online self-disclosure understood as providing intimate, private information about oneself. The research continues the work on self-disclosure of women with breast cancer using Instagram. However, this previous research revolved around posts, and thus was limited. The current study on TikTok asks the following questions: 1) are TikTok videos disclosing information in the manner the previous research on Instagram shows? 2) What are the creators’ motivations and what meanings do they give to disclosing cancer and how do the users position themselves considering the positive culture? The study uses categories from previous work and combines qualitative directed content analysis (DCA; 862 videos are analyzed) with in-depth interviews (n=8), and these go beyond DCA to a more nuanced understanding of the users’ lived experience. Similar to Instagram, TikTok is a tool for negative (e.g., fears, anxiety, pain) and positive self-disclosure (e.g., joyful life events, self-acceptance, self-affirmation) with the prevalence of positive and educational videos (e.g. prevention, debunking stereotypes and normalizing the disease). The respondents feel especially competent to educate others because of their experiences. The research undermines the traditional understanding of online self-disclosure, as for users seeking support is not that important, compared to informing and warning others. Also, the study debunks positive culture as a too-general category, as the interviewees constitute a particular niche and seem not to care how they are perceived while disclosing cancer.

This article is a review of English-language texts on the experiences of adolescents with cancer. The aim of the article is to show the adolescents’ experiences of cancer based on available research. The review of texts includes studies conducted in the phenomenological approach. Selection of the texts based on specific criteria was followed by their analysis. The analysis was of qualitative and inductive character. Separate analytical categories are: difficulties in surviving cancer, strategies for coping with the disease and benefits of being sick, experience of support from the family and medical staff.

The entertainment education (EE) approach shows that entertainment storylines influence people's attitudes, opinions, and behavior, and this occurs, among others, when it comes to health and disease. In the case of TV shows and movies cancer is the most frequently shown disease, and this is especially important when considering the rise of VOD platforms, gaining in subscribers and popularity. The article aims at signaling Netflix's EE potential, hence it could be a starting point for future studies of streaming platform's EE, a highly neglected area. Netflix is thus 1) compared with other popular VODs in terms of the number of cancer content (this being the main interest of the presented analysis) and 2) three content categories are indicated. Also, 3) a brief description of selected texts is presented. The aim of the article is exploratory, and it highlights the need for future research, as the potential of Netflix's EE seems the greatest when compared to other platforms analyzed. Netflix has the largest number of contents featuring cancer, and these could influence audiences, i.e., raise awareness, change attitudes, and motivate individuals to act.