Most breast cancer-related tweets focus on awareness, patient experiences

MUNICH — The majority of breast cancer-related tweets focus on disease awareness and patients’ experiences rather than medical information, according to study results presented at European Society for Medical Oncology Congress.

“In the era of big data, the presence of cancer in social media is undeniable,” Rodrigo Sanchez-Bayona, MD, of Clinica Universidad de Navarra in Pamplona, Spain, and colleagues wrote. “Twitter is one of the biggest networks worldwide; therefore, it establishes an enormous real-world data field of interest when studying health issues. As far as we know, there are no exploratory studies about the content or authorship of tweets related to breast cancer.”

Sanchez-Bayona and colleagues collected all tweets with the hashtag #BreastCancer posted to Twitter during a 7-day period.

They categorized the 6,341 tweets — which included 3,703 original posts and 2,638 retweets — based on whether they included medical or nonmedical content, whether any medical content was appropriate or inappropriate, and the subtheme of each tweet (eg, diagnosis, treatment, prognosis or prevention).

Researchers also determined whether tweets came from a private account, public account or institution; the aim of the tweet, such as a patient’s or relative’s experience, advertising, fundraising, scientific content or patient advocacy; and the extent to which tweets conveyed a stigmatizing attitude toward cancer.

Sanchez-Bayona and colleagues determined 31% (n = 1,144) of original tweets included medical content, the majority (90%) of which contained appropriate content. The remaining 69% (n = 2,559) of tweets included nonmedical content. Researchers determined 14.8% of nonmedical tweets conveyed a stigmatizing attitude, researchers said.

“The numerous breast cancer awareness campaigns over the years have certainly contributed to reducing the stigma associated with this illness,” Sanchez-Bayona said in a press release.

When researchers analyzed both original tweets and retweets, they determined the most common aims were to share a patient’s experience (30.7%), patient advocacy (25.3%), scientific (17.3%), advertising (15.8%), fundraising (8.3%) or to share a relative’s experience (2.6%).

The most common subtheme was cancer prevention (44.5%), followed by treatment (25.5%), diagnosis (18.6%) and prognosis (11.4%).

The majority (60%) of tweets came from private accounts, whereas 40% came from public accounts or institutions.

Sanchez-Bayona and colleagues hope to explore and compare the social media presence for other tumor types.

“Although it would be interesting to do further research into the profiles of social media users who are the most active in the discussion about cancer, these initial findings may prove useful in themselves,” Sanchez-Bayona said in the release. “In particular, advocacy organizations can draw on them to create relevant medical content and counselling about cancer that will be more accessible to users. Social media can be used as a new way of providing information on cancer prevention and health education — not just to patients, but to a much broader audience.”

Marina Garassino, MD, medical consultant with Istituto Nationale dei Tumori in Milan, Italy, described Twitter as “a high-level platform that is much more credible than other social networks,” and she said she was not surprised to see most of the medical content posted on the site was credible.

“This analysis also illustrates the presence of patients in large numbers on Twitter,” Garassino, who was not involved with the study, said in the release. “We should take that as corroboration of a new reality: Patients now use the web to find information, and social media must be an integral part of our communication with them. Academic institutions and key opinion leaders need to be even more active in spreading their findings through these channels to counteract the ... ‘fake news’ circulating online.” – by Mark Leiser

Reference: Sanchez-Bayona R, et al. Abstract 360P_PR. Presented at: European Society for Medical Oncology Congress; Oct. 19-23, 2018; Munich.

Disclosure: The authors report no relevant financial disclosures.