JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Scan-associated anxiety (‘scanxiety’) is commonly experienced by people having cancer-related scans. Social media platforms such as Twitter provide a novel source of data for observational research.

Objective:

We aimed to identify posts on Twitter (‘tweets’) related to scanxiety, describe the volume and content of these tweets, and describe demographics of users posting about scanxiety.

Methods:

We searched for ‘scanxiety’ and associated keywords in cancer-related, publicly available, English-language tweets posted between January 2018 and December 2020. We defined ‘conversations’ as a primary tweet (first tweet about scanxiety) and subsequent tweets (interactions stemming from the primary tweet). User demographics and volume of primary tweets were assessed. Conversations underwent thematic and content analysis.

Results:

2013 unique Twitter users initiated a conversation about scanxiety. Most were patients (64%), female (66%), from North America (56%) and had breast cancer (34%). There were 3623 Twitter conversations, with a mean of 101 per month (range 40 to 180). Five themes were identified: experiences of scanxiety, acknowledgement and advocacy of scanxiety, messages of support relating to scanxiety, strategies to reduce scanxiety and research about scanxiety.

Conclusions:

Social media platforms like Twitter enable individuals to share their experiences and offer support while providing researchers unique data to improve their understanding of a problem. Clinical Trial: Not applicable