To read or not to read? Identifying communication patterns in three cancer-related Facebook pages

Abstract

In recent years, social media have become a popular tool for health communication. Healthcare professionals in many areas already take advantage of such media to communicate important messages to their audiences. Facebook pages are widely used for this purpose. This study analyzes three Brazilian Facebook pages related to cancer. The objective of this work is to explore whether there are communication patterns that generate greater public engagement. The pages selected for this study are the following: Quimioterapia e Beleza (Chemotherapy & Beauty), Fundação do Câncer (Brazilian Cancer Foundation) and Cabelegria (Hair and Happiness). We collected posts on these three pages over a period of six months, totaling 1,243 posts. Content analysis was used to classify the posts into categories. The categories that generated the greatest engagement were “testimonies”, “solidarity” and “anniversaries”. In two out of the three analyzed Facebook pages, those categories were not the most frequent; the potential of each page was underutilized. This result shows the importance of analyses that help health professionals to use social media to communicate effectively about prevention, risk factors, healthy living and early diagnosis, among other topics.

Keywords

• facebook
• cancer
• engagement
• effectiveness
• communication