title: Leveraging Social Media to Promote Public Health Knowledge: Example of Cancer Awareness via Twitter.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  As social media becomes increasingly popular online venues for engaging in communication about public health issues, it is important to understand how users promote knowledge and awareness about specific topics.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  The aim of this study is to examine the frequency of discussion and differences by race and ethnicity of cancer-related topics among unique users via Twitter.
  
  
  METHODS
  Tweets were collected from April 1, 2014 through January 21, 2015 using the Twitter public streaming Application Programming Interface (API) to collect 1% of public tweets. Twitter users were classified into racial and ethnic groups using a new text mining approach applied to English-only tweets. Each ethnic group was then analyzed for frequency in cancer-related terms within user timelines, investigated for changes over time and across groups, and measured for statistical significance.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Observable usage patterns of the terms "cancer", "breast cancer", "prostate cancer", and "lung cancer" between Caucasian and African American groups were evident across the study period. We observed some variation in the frequency of term usage during months known to be labeled as cancer awareness months, particularly September, October, and November. Interestingly, we found that of the terms studied, "colorectal cancer" received the least Twitter attention.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The findings of the study provide evidence that social media can serve as a very powerful and important tool in implementing and disseminating critical prevention, screening, and treatment messages to the community in real-time. The study also introduced and tested a new methodology of identifying race and ethnicity among users of the social media. Study findings highlight the potential benefits of social media as a tool in reducing racial and ethnic disparities.
authors.affiliation: College of Computing SciencesDepartment of Information SystemsNew Jersey Institute of TechnologyNewark, NJUnited States.
authors.forename: Songhua
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-6715-7745
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.affiliation: College of Computing SciencesDepartment of Information SystemsNew Jersey Institute of TechnologyNewark, NJUnited States.
authors.forename: Christopher
authors.identifier: 0000-0003-2047-1769
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Markson
authors.affiliation: Rutgers School of Communication and InformationDepartment of Library and Information ScienceNew Brunswick, NJUnited States.
authors.forename: Kaitlin L
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-1589-7418
authors.initials: KL
authors.lastname: Costello
authors.affiliation: School of Public HealthEpidemiologyRutgers UniversityPiscataway, NJUnited States.
authors.forename: Cathleen Y
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-9874-4141
authors.initials: CY
authors.lastname: Xing
authors.affiliation: School of Public Health and Cancer Institute of New JerseyEpidemiologyRutgers UniversityPiscataway, NJUnited States.
authors.forename: Kitaw
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-8777-5583
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Demissie
authors.affiliation: School of Public Health and Cancer Institute of New JerseyEpidemiologyRutgers UniversityPiscataway, NJUnited States.
authors.forename: Adana Am
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-9954-9121
authors.initials: AA
authors.lastname: Llanos
keywords: Twitter; awareness; breast cancer; colorectal cancer; disparities; lung cancer; prostate cancer; social media