Branding cancer research institutions through social media platforms

Abstract

Cancer research institutions resort to social media platforms to reinforce their relations with stakeholders and promote their brand. Nevertheless, they face several challenges: strict legal frameworks, patients’ new demands, and the development health technology. This paper aims to analyze how cancer research institutions manage social media platforms, as well as their corporate websites, for branding purposes. To do that, we conducted a literature review about cancer hospitals’ corporate communication strategies on these platforms; and then, we resorted to 48 indicators to evaluate how the top 100 cancer research institutions in the world managed their corporate websites, as well as their corporate profiles on <i>Facebook</i>, <i>Twitter</i>, and <i>YouTube</i>, for promoting their brand. We concluded that these organizations should use social media platforms to explain their brand architecture, develop a corporate website based on a public health approach, and describe their social engagements in a clearer way. Finally, we recommended three managerial initiatives for these organizations: creating an in-house communication department employing experts in communication and public health, conducting an intellectual reflection about the company’s brand genealogy, and integrating oncologists and nurses in the company’s corporate communication initiatives carried out on social media platforms.

Development of decision-making technique based on sentiment analysis of crowdsourcing data in medical social media resources

“…Reviewing the improvement of the organizations activities in the context of social media, [25] introduces the concept of social organizational credibility, and evaluates the organization's social media activity and media relations as the main factor of its credibility, and shows the importance of paying special attention to the activity of staff members in social media. [13] demonstrates the significance of using social media platforms to strengthen relationships of cancer research institutes with stakeholders and to promote their brands, and justifies the need to integrate oncologists and nurses into the company's corporate communication initiatives. These challenges have made it urgent to pay attention to medical social media resources to increase the effectiveness of the clinics.…”

“…Crowdsourcing is the practice of involving large groups of people, their knowledge and experience through the Internet to solve a certain problem [10,11]. Studies devoted to the use of information gathered in the medical social media to make decisions about improving the quality of medical care are a clear example in this regard [12][13][14]. Based on crowdsourcing in medical social media resources, for making decisions to improve the quality of medical care, [15] uses statistical and content analysis of the information collected from medical social media tools and describes scenarios for improving the qua lity of medical services.…”

“…Whereas [19] substantiates that the increase in social media activity has become a valuable source of information for solving various problems along with the harmful sides of medical social media environment. As a logical result of these theses, [13] shows the use of information shared by cancer research institutes on social media to solve the problems of cancer patients, [20] is dedicated to promoting health and well-being through social networks. These studies justify that the information shared in the social media environment supports individuals and medical media subjects to solve the problems they face.…”