Vos Sarah C, Sutton Jeannette, Gibson C Ben, Butts Carter T
1 Department of Health Management & Policy, College of Public Health, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA.
2 Department of Communication, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA.
Cancer Control. 2019 Jan-Dec;26(1):1073274819825826. doi: 10.1177/1073274819825826.
Social media platforms have the potential to facilitate the dissemination of cancer prevention and control messages following celebrity cancer diagnoses. However, cancer communicators have yet to systematically leverage these naturally occurring interventions on social media as these events are difficult to identify as they are unfolding and little research has analyzed their effect on social media conversations. In this study, we add to the research by analyzing how a celebrity cancer announcement influenced Twitter conversations in terms of the volume of social media messages and the type of content. Over a 9-day period, during which actor Ben Stiller announced that he had been treated for prostate cancer, we collected 1.2 million Twitter messages about cancer. We conducted automated content analyses to identify how often common cancer sites (prostate, breast, colon, or lung) were discussed. Then, we used manual content analysis on a sample of messages to identify cancer continuum content (awareness, prevention, early detection, diagnosis, treatment, survivorship, and end of life). Chi-square analyses were implemented to evaluate changes in cancer site and cancer continuum content before and after the announcement. We found that messages related to prostate cancer increased significantly more than expected for 2 days following Stiller's announcement. However, the number of cancer messages that described other cancer locations either did not increase or did not increase by the same magnitude. In terms of message content, results showed larger than expected increases in diagnosis messages. These results suggest opportunities to shape social media conversations following celebrity cancer announcements and increase prevention and early detection messages.
社交媒体平台有潜力在名人被诊断出患癌症后促进癌症预防与控制信息的传播。然而，癌症传播者尚未系统地利用社交媒体上这些自然发生的干预措施，因为这些事件在发生时很难识别，而且很少有研究分析它们对社交媒体对话的影响。在本研究中，我们通过分析名人宣布患癌事件如何在社交媒体信息数量和内容类型方面影响推特对话来补充这方面的研究。在为期9天的时间里，演员本·斯蒂勒宣布他已接受前列腺癌治疗，我们收集了120万条关于癌症的推特信息。我们进行了自动内容分析，以确定常见癌症部位（前列腺、乳腺、结肠或肺）被讨论的频率。然后，我们对一部分信息进行了人工内容分析，以识别癌症连续统一体内容（意识、预防、早期检测、诊断、治疗、生存和生命终结）。实施卡方分析以评估宣布前后癌症部位和癌症连续统一体内容的变化。我们发现，在斯蒂勒宣布患癌后的两天里，与前列腺癌相关的信息增加幅度明显超过预期。然而，描述其他癌症部位的癌症信息数量要么没有增加，要么增加幅度不同。在信息内容方面，结果显示诊断信息的增加幅度大于预期。这些结果表明，在名人宣布患癌后塑造社交媒体对话并增加预防和早期检测信息存在机会。
