Bridging Information and Action: Opportunities and Equity Challenges in Social Media–Driven Cancer Awareness
Introduction/Background/Significance: Social media is a powerful tool for disseminating cancer prevention and early detection information but faces challenges such as gender disparities, misinformation, and underrepresentation of minorities. Women receive 28% fewer views and 41% less engagement than men, while most cancer screening content on YouTube and TikTok is low quality and rife with misinformation. MedNews Week (MNW), a global virtual education platform, tackles these issues by promoting accurate and inclusive digital health communication. This study evaluates engagement and platform effectiveness to enhance cancer communication strategies.
Materials and Methods/Case Presentation/Objective: A systematic review of 225 articles from PubMed, supplemented by MedNews Week (MNW) outreach data, was conducted to evaluate the role of social media in cancer prevention and early detection. Metrics analyzed included platform effectiveness, engagement trends, content themes, and challenges related to misinformation and representation.
Results/Description/Main Outcome Measures: Twitter emerged as the most utilized platform, featured in 57% of studies, and was effective in facilitating discussions on cancer prevention. Breast cancer was the primary focus of interventions, comprising 52% of efforts, while colorectal and lung cancers received less attention. Engagement metrics in 39% of studies primarily measured basic indicators like likes and reach, highlighting a need for more comprehensive assessments of behavioral impact. Content quality was a critical issue, with 98% of YouTube and 100% of TikTok videos on prostate cancer screening rated low to moderate quality. Furthermore, 88% of YouTube and all TikTok videos exhibited moderate to high levels of misinformation. Representation gaps were evident, with African American and Hispanic populations featured in only 10% and 6% of YouTube videos and 20% and 12% of TikTok videos, respectively. Discussions of high- risk racial and ethnic groups occurred in 46% of YouTube but only 8% of TikTok videos. Promising methods for identifying misinformation included linguistic models analyzing Twitter posts, achieving a macro F1 score of up to 79.7 in predicting the spread of unreliable information.
Conclusions: Social media offers significant potential to enhance cancer awareness, prevention, and early detection but faces persistent challenges, including misinformation, lack of inclusivity, and inconsistent content quality. Addressing these barriers requires platform-specific strategies, collaboration between healthcare entities and influencers, and prioritization of diverse representation. MNW's initiatives highlight the value of delivering reliable, inclusive health information, reinforcing its role in reducing disparities and advancing equitable digital health communication.
