Social Media and Men’s Health: A Content Analysis of Twitter Conversations During the 2013 Movember Campaigns in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom

Abstract

The Movember Foundation raises awareness and funds for men's health issues such as prostate and testicular cancers in conjunction with a moustache contest. The 2013 Movember campaigns in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom shared the same goal of creating conversations about men's health that lead to increased awareness and understanding of the health risks men face. Our objective was to explore Twitter conversations to identify whether the 2013 Movember campaigns sparked global conversations about prostate cancer, testicular cancer, and other men's health issues. We conducted a content analysis of 12,666 tweets posted during the 2013 Movember campaigns in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom (4,222 tweets from each country) to investigate whether tweets were health-related or non-health-related and to determine what topics dominated conversations. Few tweets ( n = 84, 0.7% of 12,666 tweets) provided content-rich or actionable health information that would lead to awareness and understanding of men's health risks. While moustache growing and grooming was the most popular topic in U.S. tweets, conversations about community engagement were most common in Canadian and U.K. tweets. Significantly more tweets co-opted the Movember campaign to market products or contests in the United States than Canada and the United Kingdom ( p < .05). Findings from this content analysis of Twitter suggest that the 2013 Movember campaigns in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom sparked few conversations about prostate and testicular cancers that could potentially lead to greater awareness and understanding of important men's health issues.

Social Media Engagement With Cancer Awareness Campaigns Declined During the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election

“…Twitter‐based cancer communication campaigns have often received praise for raising public awareness and encouraging support for affected individuals and their families and friends (Bravo & Hoffman‐Goetz, ; Jacobsen & Jacobsen, ; Sedrak et al, ; Thackeray et al, 2013), but the success or failure of these campaigns may depend in part on the issues they are competing against for public attention and engagement. In 2016, engagement with the U.S. presidential campaign likely drove a sharp decline in online communication about both breast and prostate cancer.…”

“…Health education and awareness campaigns for cancer and other diseases increasingly use social media as part of strategic communication efforts to reach targeted communities (Bravo & Hoffman‐Goetz, ; Patel, Chang, Greysen, & Chopra, ; Sedrak, Cohen, Merchant, & Schapira, ; Thackery, Burton, Giraud‐Carrier, Rollins, & Draper, 2013). Two prominent examples of these initiatives are National Breast Cancer Awareness Month (NBCAM), in October, and Movember, which promotes men's health and prostate cancer awareness in November.…”

Content shared on social media for national cancer survivors day 2018

“…Our study contributes to this growing body of work through a concurrent analysis of Twitter and Instagram posts. Going beyond previous studies on how Twitter functions as a site for information sharing by individuals or organizations, [20,24,26,29,30] our study emphasizes the role social media plays as a venue for sharing illness narratives. Analyzing both Twitter and Instagram in conjunction allowed us to observe the apparent difference in the tone and thematic content between Instagram and Twitter posts.…”

“…To put our findings in the context of literature on social media and cancer to date, aligned with previous studies, our analysis of posts from National Cancer Survivors Day demonstrates how cancer awareness months promote awareness by the sharing of illness narratives and treatment trajectories on social media. [20,26,27,29].…”

“…Movember) to drive sampling could be a fruitful approach for identifying narratives and representations of interest. [29,30] Using a previously published method of hashtag identification, [31] we identified 9 relevant hashtags, or words or phrases preceded by the "#" symbol that allow social media platforms to aggregate posts, [32] from Twitter and Instagram (#nationalcancersurviorsday, #ncsd2018, #survivorshipmonth, #endcancer, #cancersurvivorsday, #cancersurvivor, #cancercommunity, #bethebossovercancer, #celebratelife). Two researchers (GL and RC) identified these hashtags by first finding which hashtags were trending on June 3, 2018 (e.g.…”