Using Twitter to raise the profile of childhood cancer awareness month
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(2020) 9:3
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Using Twitter to raise the profile of childhood cancer awareness month Mohsen Yoosefi Nejad1 · Maryam Sadat Delghandi2 · Ahmed Omar Bali3 · Mehdi Hosseinzadeh4,5 Received: 22 July 2019 / Revised: 22 October 2019 / Accepted: 25 October 2019 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Austria, part of Springer Nature 2019
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. Keywords Childhood cancer · Awareness month · CCAM · Twitter · Social network analysis
1 Background Childhood cancer is a major public health challenge that receives much less research attention than other types of disease. In 2015, an estimated 10,380 children (0–14 years) were diagnosed with cancer and 1250 are believed to have * Mehdi Hosseinzadeh [email protected] Mohsen Yoosefi Nejad [email protected] Maryam Sadat Delghandi [email protected] Ahmed Omar Bali [email protected] 1
Department of Computer Engineering and Information Technology, Payame Noor University, Tehran, Iran
2
Department of Computer Engineering, Sabzevar Branch, Islamic Azad University, Sabzevar, Iran
3
Diplomacy and Public Relations Department, University of Human Development, Sulaymaniyah, Iraq
4
Health Management and Economics Research Center, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
5
Computer Science, University of Human Development, Sulaymaniyah, Iraq
died from the disease (Siegel et al. 2015). As the number of childhood cancer survivors increases, so too does the need for supportive programs and services (Bingen and Kupst 2010). This highlights the need for research that explores what is needed to improve the experience of families impacted by childhood cancer (Wakefield et al. 2015) and how to best achieve increased early detection rates through broader social awareness of the signs and symptoms (Hossain et al. 2016). Childhood Cancer International (CCI) is a patient support organization for childhood cancer and formed in 1994. It has 181-member organ
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