Tweeting About Prostate and Testicular Cancers: What Are Individuals Saying in Their Discussions About the 2013 Movember Canada Campaign?

Abstract

Effective and persuasive health campaigns are an important tool for promoting cancer prevention education. The 2013 Movember Canada campaign presented an opportunity to raise awareness and funds about men's health with a particular focus on prostate and testicular cancers. The Movember campaign encouraged participants to talk about men's health (including prostate and testicular cancers) and had a strong presence on social media sites such as Twitter in November 2013. The objective of this study was to analyze tweets about the 2013 Movember Canada for underlying themes in order understand what those discussions were about. A directed content analysis methodology was used to analyze 2400 tweets. Tweets were read and coded for overt and latent themes in an iterative fashion until saturation of themes occurred. The major themes identified in the tweets were fundraising as a priority (34%), making a change to men's health (18%), the campaign as a moustache contest rather than a charity (26%), the use of masculine metaphors/imagery (9%), and the role of women as moustache supporters (4%). Findings from Twitter suggest that users rarely associate their campaign efforts with prostate and/or testicular cancer in public online conversations about the 2013 Movember Canada campaign.