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Reddit and Brain Cancer: A Content Analysis of Online Communication on the Brain Tumor Subreddit
ABSTRACT
Background:
Many brain tumor patients commonly utilize online resources such as Reddit as avenues for self-management and support outside of the clinical setting.
Objective:
We aimed to examine trends from Reddit discussion treads on brain tumors to identify areas of need in patient care.
Methods:
We used a qualitative, descriptive design to understand patient and caregivers unmet and met needs. We analyzed the top 100 posts from the ‘braincancer’ subreddit to identify common themes.
Results:
The qualitative content analysis revealed three major topic areas: (1) harnessing hope; (2) moving through the grief process; and (3) expressing gratitude toward other Reddit users. Most of the authors of the posts were patients with brain tumors (n = 32; 36.4%) who used Reddit as a reflective journaling tool to process associated emotions of a challenging diagnosis.
Conclusions:
This study shows the potential of Reddit to serve as unique group therapy platform for patients affected by brain tumors. Additionally, the results highlight the importance of recommending Reddit as a therapeutic virtual community. Our results highlight the support provided by the Reddit community members as a unique mechanism to assist cancer survivors and caregivers with the emotional processing of living with brain tumors.
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.