Charities’ use of Twitter: exploring social support for women living with and beyond breast cancer

ABSTRACT

Twitter is one social media platform that enables those experiencing breast cancer to access support from others. This study explores how cancer charities provide support to women living with and beyond breast cancer (LWBBC) through their Twitter feeds. Seven hundred and seventy-two tweets from seven purposively sampled cancer charities were used to explore Twitter posts made relating to social support. Two questions were posed: (1) what type of support is positioned by cancer charities on Twitter for women LWBBC and (2) what themes emerge from tweet content pertaining to support for women LWBBC? Using a peer-reviewed typology of ‘social support’ [Rui, J., Chen, Y., & Damiano, A. (2013). Health organizations providing and seeking social support: A twitter-based content analysis. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, And Social Networking, 16(9), 669–673. doi:10.1089/cyber.2012.0350], a deductive content analysis was utilised to identify informational, instrumental or emotional social support tweets (n = 199). Over half (56%) of tweets offered informational support; 27% provided or sought instrumental support and 18% related to emotional support. Interestingly, 74.3% (n = 573) of tweets were not related to providing or seeking social support. An inductive qualitative thematic analysis of the 199 tweets identified the focus (i.e., themes) of support. Three themes were identified: (1) raising awareness, (2) focusing on the future and (3) sharing stories. Cancer charities predominantly use Twitter to signpost women to informational resources and to seek instrumental support to meet charitable objectives. As the number of women LWBBC continues to increase, this study provides valuable insight into how charities represent themselves on Twitter in relation to the social support needs of women LWBBC.

KEYWORDS:

• Breast cancer
• tweets
• social support
• charities
• living with and beyond
• twitter

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Cathy Ure is a Doctoral Candidate at The University of Salford. She is a member of the British Psychological Society and has an MSc in Media Psychology. Her focus of interest is on the use of digital technologies to support patient health, with a particular focus on the use of social media platforms by women with health concerns. Her PhD explores social media use by women living with and beyond breast cancer to support psychosocial needs.

Adam Galpin is a Senior Lecturer in Media Psychology at the University of Salford, UK. He is interested in exploring the application of Psychology to understand the use of technology, and has worked on projects focused on children's internet usability and e-health forums.

Dr Anna Mary Cooper-Ryan is a Lecturer in Public Health and Programme leader for the MSc Public Health. She has a first degree in Psychology with Neuropsychology, masters in counselling psychology studies and PhD in Dental Public Health. She is a fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a graduate member of the BPS. Current research projects focus on: behaviour change and the role of digital technology in research.

Dr Jenna Condie is a Lecturer in Digital Research and Online Social Analysis at Western Sydney University, Australia. Jenna champions the use of social media to encourage voice, participation, dialogue and action within academic and community contexts. She is a Chartered Psychologist with the British Psychological Society, a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and a World Social Science Fellow for the International Social Science Council.

ORCID

Cathy Ure http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5021-1947

Adam Galpin http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7699-8706

Anna Mary Cooper-Ryan http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8305-8587

Jenna Condie http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0811-0517

Notes

1 Typically, the most up to date cancer charity sector financial information published online at the time of data collection were annual returns made for 2012.