Cancer and Social Media: A Comparison of Traffic about Breast Cancer, Prostate Cancer, and Other Reproductive Cancers on Twitter and Instagram

Abstract

Social media are often heralded as offering cancer campaigns new opportunities to reach the public. However, these campaigns may not be equally successful, depending on the nature of the campaign itself, the type of cancer being addressed, and the social media platform being examined. This study is the first to compare social media activity on Twitter and Instagram across three time periods: #WorldCancerDay in February, the annual month-long campaigns of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month (NBCAM) in October and Movember in November, and during the full year outside of these campaigns. Our results suggest that women’s reproductive cancers – especially breast cancer – tend to outperform men’s reproductive cancer – especially prostate cancer – across campaigns and social media platforms. Twitter overall generates substantially more activity than Instagram for both cancer campaigns, suggesting Instagram may be an untapped resource. However, the messaging for both campaigns tends to focus on awareness and support rather than on concrete actions and behaviors. We suggest health communication efforts need to focus on effective messaging and building engaged communities for cancer communication across social media platforms.

Notes

¹ Although September is technically prostate cancer month, it receives less traffic on social media during this month, as we describe below. We focus on Movember in November, where traffic regarding prostate cancer increases.

² Specifically, data was collected from Instagram: [Feb 02 23:49:36 UTC, Feb 06 00:57:56 UTC] and Twitter: [Feb 02 23:50:38 UTC, Feb 06 00:59:44 UTC].

Additional information

Funding

This project was supported by the provost’s Multidisciplinary Research Initiative at George Mason University.