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What kills us and what moves us: A comparative discourse analysis of heart disease and breast cancer

Claire E O'Hanlon1,2

  • 1Greater Los Angeles Health System, US Department of Veterans Affairs, Los Angeles, CA, USA.

Digital Health
|May 10, 2019
PubMed

Insights

Social media engagement for breast cancer (#BreastCancer) is higher than for heart disease (#HeartDisease). The breast cancer community shows more social orientation and personal experience sharing, suggesting a need for a similar women-focused approach for heart disease awareness.

Area of Science:

  • Social media analysis
  • Digital health communication
  • Public health discourse

Background:

  • Heart disease causes nearly 300,000 US women deaths annually, exceeding breast cancer deaths (40,000).
  • Online patient communities, particularly for breast cancer, are recognized for high engagement and emotional support.
  • This study explores differences in social media discourse between breast cancer and heart disease.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To compare social media discourse patterns and community engagement between breast cancer and heart disease.
  • To identify unique characteristics of the breast cancer online community.
  • To inform strategies for enhancing heart disease patient communities.

Main Methods:

  • Computer-assisted text analysis of Twitter posts using #BreastCancer and #HeartDisease hashtags (Dec 2013-Dec 2014).
  • Lexical analysis (word/hashtag level) using AntConc software.
  • Lexicogrammatical analysis (style/stance) using DocuScope.

Main Results:

  • The #BreastCancer corpus (592,046 posts) had significantly more retweets (57%) than #HeartDisease (269,769 posts, 13% retweets).
  • #BreastCancer discourse featured gendered language, art/activism links, and community-specific initialisms, with a socially oriented stance.
  • #HeartDisease discourse was more scientific, scholarly, and discussed in conjunction with other diseases, using oppositional reasoning and academic registers.

Conclusions:

  • The #HeartDisease social media community exhibits lower engagement and less disease-specific, personal content compared to #BreastCancer.
  • Developing a women-focused online community for heart disease could potentially enhance engagement and support, mirroring successes seen in breast cancer communities.
Abstract

Keywords:
Social mediabreast cancerbreast neoplasmschronic diseasediscourse analysisfemalehealth communicationheart diseaseslexical analysislexicogrammatical analysis

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