Using Twitter to raise the profile of childhood cancer awareness month

Abstract

One of the best-known examples of a campaign to raise awareness about pediatric disease is childhood cancer awareness month (CCAM). This study uses cross-sectional, descriptive-analytical methodology to explore how Twitter was employed during CCAM. We collected childhood cancer-related tweets from August 30 to October 2, 2015, which coincided with CCAM and several days before and after the awareness month. Using MALLET, we applied Latent Dirichlet allocation statistical modeling to extract the main topics of the collected tweets. We then explored how four different types of accounts—organizations, news agencies, celebrities, and individuals—used social media to talk about childhood cancer during CCAM using qualitative content analysis. Our research showed that celebrities were the group whose tweets had the most average impressions. The results also showed that tweets authored by organizations and celebrities were retweeted at greater rates than individuals and even news agencies. This suggests that organizations and celebrities have greater potential to raise awareness about issues like childhood illnesses.