Look who's talking now: Cancer in primary care on Twitter. An observational study

Place branding: Religion in shaping the three-dimensional essence of a city brand through stakeholder engagement

This study explores the role of religion in engaging stakeholders in branding a place on social media and unmasks what implications this has for (re)constructing the three-dimensional meanings of a place brand. Using the content analysis method to examine the case of Saudi Arabia, it probes how the key stakeholder groups of the government and the residents structure and interact with the narratives of the cities-Jeddah and Riyadh-on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. The results show the Islamic religion serves as a powerful tool for motivating the residents to engage in the government-led city branding initiatives at the individual level. However, the strategy of dwelling on religion to mobilize resident engagement at the individual level towards the social level with the aim of growing resources in support of social development should be reassessed within a dynamic social system. Theoretically, the proposed framework of religion city branding expands the scope of stakeholder engagement in place branding research through the integration with the driver of religion, especially unveiling how religious factors shape the personality traits of a place brand. It contributes to the practical sense that religious elements might be deployed by the key stakeholder groups of the government and residents in city branding initiatives, which potentially contributes to their relationship and the engagement of residents in co-creating a place brand with the government. This Saudi-focused study, therefore, possesses significance for place branding practices in Middle Eastern countries and beyond.

Perspectives and Experiences of Patients With Thyroid Cancer at a Global Level: Retrospective Descriptive Study of Twitter Data

BACKGROUND

Twitter has become a popular platform for individuals to broadcast their daily experiences and opinions on a wide range of topics and emotions. Tweets from patients with cancer could offer insights into their needs. However, limited research has been conducted using Twitter data to understand the needs of patients with cancer despite the substantial amount of health-related data posted on the platform daily.

OBJECTIVE

This study aimed to uncover the potential of using Twitter data to understand the perspectives and experiences of patients with thyroid cancer at a global level.

METHODS

 This retrospective descriptive study collected tweets relevant to thyroid cancer in 2020 using the Twitter scraping tool. Only English-language tweets were included, and data preprocessing was performed to remove irrelevant tweets, duplicates, and retweets. Both tweets and Twitter users were manually classified into various groups based on the content. Each tweet underwent sentiment analysis and was classified as either positive, neutral, or negative.

RESULTS

A total of 13,135 tweets related to thyroid cancer were analyzed. The authors of the tweets included patients with thyroid cancer (3225 tweets, 24.6%), patient's families and friends (2449 tweets, 18.6%), medical journals and media (1733 tweets, 13.2%), health care professionals (1093 tweets, 8.3%), and medical health organizations (940 tweets, 7.2%), respectively. The most discussed topics related to living with cancer (3650 tweets, 27.8%), treatment (2891 tweets, 22%), diagnosis (1613 tweets, 12.3%), risk factors and prevention (1137 tweets, 8.7%), and research (953 tweets, 7.3%). An average of 36 tweets pertaining to thyroid cancer were posted daily. Notably, the release of a film addressing thyroid cancer and the public disclosure of a news reporter's personal diagnosis of thyroid cancer resulted in a significant escalation in the volume of tweets. From the sentiment analysis, 53.5% (7025/13,135) of tweets were classified as neutral statements and 32.7% (4299/13,135) of tweets expressed negative emotions. Tweets from patients with thyroid cancer had the highest proportion of negative emotion (1385/3225 tweets, 42.9%), particularly when discussing symptoms.

CONCLUSIONS

 This study provides new insights on using Twitter data as a valuable data source to understand the experiences of patients with thyroid cancer. Twitter may provide an opportunity to improve patient and physician engagement or apply as a potential research data source.

Methods for Analyzing the Contents of Social Media for Health Care: Scoping Review

BACKGROUND

Given the rapid development of social media, effective extraction and analysis of the contents of social media for health care have attracted widespread attention from health care providers. As far as we know, most of the reviews focus on the application of social media, and there is a lack of reviews that integrate the methods for analyzing social media information for health care.

OBJECTIVE

This scoping review aims to answer the following 4 questions: (1) What types of research have been used to investigate social media for health care, (2) what methods have been used to analyze the existing health information on social media, (3) what indicators should be applied to collect and evaluate the characteristics of methods for analyzing the contents of social media for health care, and (4) what are the current problems and development directions of methods used to analyze the contents of social media for health care?

METHODS

A scoping review following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines was conducted. We searched PubMed, the Web of Science, EMBASE, the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, and the Cochrane Library for the period from 2010 to May 2023 for primary studies focusing on social media and health care. Two independent reviewers screened eligible studies against inclusion criteria. A narrative synthesis of the included studies was conducted.

RESULTS

Of 16,161 identified citations, 134 (0.8%) studies were included in this review. These included 67 (50.0%) qualitative designs, 43 (32.1%) quantitative designs, and 24 (17.9%) mixed methods designs. The applied research methods were classified based on the following aspects: (1) manual analysis methods (content analysis methodology, grounded theory, ethnography, classification analysis, thematic analysis, and scoring tables) and computer-aided analysis methods (latent Dirichlet allocation, support vector machine, probabilistic clustering, image analysis, topic modeling, sentiment analysis, and other natural language processing technologies), (2) categories of research contents, and (3) health care areas (health practice, health services, and health education).

CONCLUSIONS

Based on an extensive literature review, we investigated the methods for analyzing the contents of social media for health care to determine the main applications, differences, trends, and existing problems. We also discussed the implications for the future. Traditional content analysis is still the mainstream method for analyzing social media content, and future research may be combined with big data research. With the progress of computers, mobile phones, smartwatches, and other smart devices, social media information sources will become more diversified. Future research can combine new sources, such as pictures, videos, and physiological signals, with online social networking to adapt to the development trend of the internet. More medical information talents need to be trained in the future to better solve the problem of network information analysis. Overall, this scoping review can be useful for a large audience that includes researchers entering the field.

Cancer and COVID-19 Vaccines on Twitter:The Voice and Vaccine Attitude of Cancer Community

We investigate social media discourses on the relationship between cancer and COVID-19 vaccines focusing on the key textual topics, themes reflecting the voice of cancer community, authors who contribute to the discourse, and valence toward vaccines. We analyzed 6,427 tweets about cancer and COVID-19 vaccines, posted from when vaccines were approved in the U.S. (December 2020) to the February 2022. We mixed quantitative text mining, manual coding and statistical analysis, and inductive qualitative thematic analysis. Nearly 16% of the tweets posted by a cancer community member mentioned about refusal or delay of their vaccination at the state/local level during the initial rollout despite the CDC's recommendation to prioritize adults with high-risk medical conditions. Most tweets posted by cancer patients (pro = 82.4% vs. anti = 5.1%) and caregivers (pro = 89.2% vs. anti = 4.2%) showed positive valence toward vaccines and advocated for vaccine uptake increase among cancer patients and the general population. Vaccine hesitancy, self-reported adverse events, and COVID-19 disruption of cancer treatment also appeared as key themes. The cancer community called for actions to improve vaccination procedures to become safe and accessible especially for elderly cancer patients, develop COVID-19 vaccines suitable for varying type, stage, and treatment of cancer, and advance cancer vaccines. Future research should continue surveilling conversations around continuous impacts of COVID-19 interference with the cancer control continuum, beyond vaccination, focusing on the voice and concern of cancer community.

Oncofertility and Fertility Preservation in Cancer Patients Across the Twitterverse

PURPOSE

Infertility is a major problem affecting children, adolescents, and young adults (AYAs) with cancer, either due to the disease itself or because of oncologic treatment. Oncofertility (OF) focuses on counseling cancer patients about fertility risks and preservation options. However, OF and fertility preservation (FP) conversations on Twitter and their impact are unknown. We aim to characterize the users and type of content of these conversations.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

This observational study analyzed tweets with the hashtags "#Oncofertility" and "#FertilityPreservation" over eight months. We classified Twitter accounts by user type and country. Tweets were categorized by content type, and retweets and likes were quantified. Descriptive statistics were used for analysis.

RESULTS

A total of 399 tweets from 223 different accounts were evaluated. Twitter accounts comprised 22 countries and stemmed from high, upper-middle, and lower-middle-income countries in 86.5%, 5.4%, and 6.3%, respectively; no accounts from low-income countries were found. Accounts were mostly from physicians (37%) and healthcare centers (20%); we did not find any patient accounts. The most common content category was informative tweets directed to patients (30.8%), followed by discussion/sharing of medical papers (25.6%). Only 14.5% of tweets contained information about children and adolescents. Still, only 4.5% were aimed at children. Retweets were absent in 16.5% of the tweets, and 80.7% did not have comments.

CONCLUSION

OF and FP discussions on Twitter were limited to interactions among medical professionals. Also, advocacy groups showed limited activity on social media. Even though a significant proportion of tweets directed to patients were found, no active involvement of patients was observed. Finally, limited number of tweets (4.5%) were directed to children and adolescents. There is a need to raise awareness about the effects of cancer on fertility in this group. Currently, Twitter is not a resource of information for children and AYAs with cancer who need OF counseling and fertility preservation. Our results open a debate on how to promote the use of social media in the future to improve the quality of OF information available, awareness, and care since there is an unmet need for fertility preservation access in young cancer patients.

Twitter for microblogging in oral health care, research, and academics: Road map and future directions

Current times have seen growing use of social medial tools, including microblogging sites like Twitter as an efficient method to disseminate information related to health amongst patients, students as well as health care workers. This article explores the role of this short, effective messaging platform in oral health care, teaching, research and learning. The concepts of “tweeting the meeting” and aggregation of conversations via “hashtags” is advocated for academic conferences, which will extend the conference reach to give the users better access to the instructors and enhance the related outcomes. Tweeting and retweeting the required research content may increase the academic footprint of the conducted research and researchers. In addition, it has served an immense role in the current COVID-19 pandemic by the regular circulation of information to the public and helped governments in policymaking and showcasing the areas of public concern. However, it still has a huge potential yet to be explored, with collective efforts towards strengthening the aspects of authenticity and standardization of the shared content.