COVID19 and #Breastcancer: A Qualitative Analysis of Tweets

• Published in: Current oncology (Toronto) Vol. 29; no. 11; pp. 8483 - 8500
• Main Authors: Naganathan, Gayathri, Bilgen, Idil, Cleland, Jordan, Reel, Emma, Cil, Tulin
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 08.11.2022; MDPI
• Subjects: breast cancer; Breast Neoplasms - therapy; Canada; COVID-19; COVID-19 - epidemiology; Epidemics; Female; health; Humans; Online education; pandemic; Pandemics; Physical fitness; Review; Social Media; Twitter; United States; United States; Canada; COVID-19; Twitter; breast cancer; health; pandemic
• ISSN: 1718-7729; 1198-0052; 1718-7729
• DOI: 10.3390/curroncol29110669

Rapid and efficient communication regarding quickly evolving medical information was paramount for healthcare providers and patients throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the last several years, social media platforms such as Twitter have emerged as important tools for health promotion, virtual learning among healthcare providers, and patient support. We conducted a qualitative thematic content analysis on tweets using the hashtags #BreastSurgery, #BreastCancer, #BreastOncology, #Pandemic, and #COVID19. Advocacy organizations were the most frequent authors of tweets captured in this dataset, and most tweets came from the United States of America (64%). Seventy-three codes were generated from the data, and, through iterative, inductive analysis, three major themes were developed: patient hesitancy and vulnerability, increased efforts in knowledge sharing, and evolving best practices. We found that Twitter was an effective way to share evolving best practices, education, and collective experiences among key stakeholders. As Twitter is increasingly used as a tool for health promotion and knowledge translation, a better understanding of how key stakeholders engage with healthcare-related topics on the platform can help optimize the use of this powerful tool.