Using Twitter for breast cancer prevention: an analysis of breast cancer awareness month

Abstract

BackgroundOne in eight women will develop breast cancer in her lifetime. The best-known awareness event is breast cancer awareness month (BCAM). BCAM month outreach efforts have been associated with increased media coverage, screening mammography and online information searching. Traditional mass media coverage has been enhanced by social media. However, there is a dearth of literature about how social media is used during awareness-related events. The purpose of this research was to understand how Twitter is being used during BCAM.MethodsThis was a cross-sectional, descriptive study. We collected breast cancer- related tweets from 26 September - 12 November 2012, using Twitter’s application programming interface. We classified Twitter users into organizations, individuals, and celebrities; each tweet was classified as an original or a retweet, and inclusion of a mention, meaning a reference to another Twitter user with @username. Statistical methods included ANOVA and chi square. For content analysis, we used computational linguistics techniques, specifically the MALLET implementation of the unsupervised topic modeling algorithm Latent Dirichlet Allocation.ResultsThere were 1,351,823 tweets by 797,827 unique users. Tweets spiked dramatically the first few days then tapered off. There was an average of 1.69 tweets per user. The majority of users were individuals. Nearly all of the tweets were original. Organizations and celebrities posted more often than individuals. On average celebrities made far more impressions; they were also retweeted more often and their tweets were more likely to include mentions. Individuals were more likely to direct a tweet to a specific person. Organizations and celebrities emphasized fundraisers, early detection, and diagnoses while individuals tweeted about wearing pink.ConclusionsTweeting about breast cancer was a singular event. The majority of tweets did not promote any specific preventive behavior. Twitter is being used mostly as a one-way communication tool. To expand the reach of the message and maximize the potential for word-of-mouth marketing using Twitter, organizations need a strategic communications plan to ensure on-going social media conversations. Organizations may consider collaborating with individuals and celebrities in these conversations. Social media communication strategies that emphasize fundraising for breast cancer research seem particularly appropriate.

On the Impact of Twitter-based Health Campaigns: A Cross-Country Analysis of Movember

“…To investigate the impact of health (related) organizations on Twitter, we define health organizations as those Twitter accounts with more than 5, 000 followers and at least one of the following keywords in their Twitter profile (an ap-proach borrowed from (Thackeray et al, 2013)): {cancer, health, pharmacy, pharmaceutical, campaign, government, firm, company, companies, news, group, society, committee, volunteer, we, official, marketing, promotions and forum).}. The overlap between both types of users (well-known vs. organizations) is between 2.2% (US) and 30.7% (Australia).…”

“…While Thackeray et al (2013) and Bravo and Hoffman-Goetz (2015) investigated the change of people's awareness during social media health campaigns, to our knowledge no research so far has considered the second goal of many health campaigns -raising funds for research and treatment.…”

Relationship between Health Information Sharing Behavior Using Social Media and Breast Cancer Screening

“…22 Another study found that tweeting about breast cancer did not promote any specific preventive behavior and is mostly used as a one-way communication tool. 9 However, anonymous online forums, such as message boards and support groups, provide information, emotional support and an avenue for selfexpression. 23 Future research could focus on determining why individuals choose to share health information on social media and what they hope to obtain from it, as well as why others choose not to do so.…”

“…5,8,9 One such public health issue is breast cancer. It is the second leading cause of cancer mortality in women, with an estimated 230,815 new cases and 40,860 associated deaths in 2013.…”

“…2,5,6,8,9,17 However, the actual effect of social networking technologies on health promotion and patient outcomes is unclear. Our goal was to describe the social media habits of breast cancer screening eligible patients to identify the utility of this approach to promoting preventive services.…”