JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is one of the leading causes of cancer death in the United States. Incidence and prevalence of CRC have historically increased with age. While rates of CRC United States have been decreasing over the past decades in those aged 65 and older, there has been an uptick in those in younger age brackets. Google News is one of the biggest traffic drivers to top news sites. It aggregates and shares news highlights from multiple sources worldwide, organized by content type. Despite the widespread use of Google News, research is lacking on how CRC is represented in this news source.

Objective:

The purpose of this study was to describe the content of Google News articles collected during CRC awareness month in March 2022.

Methods:

This cross-sectional study was conducted in March 2022 during the National Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month. Using the term colorectal cancer, 100 most recent relevant English language Google news articles were extracted and coded for content. A combined approach of both deductive and inductive coding was utilized. Descriptive analyses were conducted and frequency distributions were reported. Univariable analyses were performed to assess differences between videos that mentioned colorectal cancer screening and those that did not using the chi square test.

Results:

Of the 100 videos reviewed, nearly half (49%) were created by health news organizations and another 27% by television news services. Themes that predominated in the content included age at onset of disease (59%), mortality related to CRC (57%), and the severity of disease (50%). Only 18% discussed CRC disparities, 23% mentioned there are hereditary forms of the disease, 36% spoke of colonoscopy to screen for the disease, and 37% how the disease is treated. Most videos mentioned CRC screening (61%) and when compared to videos that did not, there were striking differences. Although mentioned in less than half of the videos that discussed CRC screening, colonoscopy (45.9% vs 20.5, p=0.01), gender (34.4% vs. 5.1%, p<0.001), and diet (29.5% vs. 7.7%, p=0.009) were still covered more often in videos not speaking about CRC screening.

Conclusions:

Heightening the public’s awareness of this disease is important but it is critical that the messages related to how preventable this cancer is, who is most likely to develop CRC, and what can be done to detect it in early stages when disease is most curable should be the critical elements of dialogue, particularly during National Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month. There is a need to disseminate information about early onset CRC and the importance of screening, especially among populations with low rates uptake. Online news is potentially an underutilized communication mechanism to encourage CRC screenings as a secondary prevention measure for high-risk groups.