Cancer and Social Media: A Comparison of Traffic about Breast Cancer, Prostate Cancer, and Other Reproductive Cancers on Twitter and Instagram

TLDR

Social media promise new avenues for cancer campaigns, yet their effectiveness varies by campaign design, cancer type, and platform. The study aims to compare Twitter and Instagram activity across World Cancer Day, National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Movember, and non‑campaign periods. Researchers analyzed engagement metrics during these three time periods to assess platform‑specific and campaign‑specific differences. Results reveal that breast cancer outperforms prostate cancer on both platforms, Twitter drives much higher activity than Instagram, and messaging largely focuses on awareness and support rather than concrete actions, underscoring the need for more effective, community‑building communication strategies.

Abstract

Social media are often heralded as offering cancer campaigns new opportunities to reach the public. However, these campaigns may not be equally successful, depending on the nature of the campaign itself, the type of cancer being addressed, and the social media platform being examined. This study is the first to compare social media activity on Twitter and Instagram across three time periods: #WorldCancerDay in February, the annual month-long campaigns of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month (NBCAM) in October and Movember in November, and during the full year outside of these campaigns. Our results suggest that women's reproductive cancers – especially breast cancer – tend to outperform men's reproductive cancer – especially prostate cancer – across campaigns and social media platforms. Twitter overall generates substantially more activity than Instagram for both cancer campaigns, suggesting Instagram may be an untapped resource. However, the messaging for both campaigns tends to focus on awareness and support rather than on concrete actions and behaviors. We suggest health communication efforts need to focus on effective messaging and building engaged communities for cancer communication across social media platforms.