Hope vs. suffering on social media: what motivates people on Instagram to follow topics in cancer?

Authors

  • Eloy Macchiute de Oliveira Ministério da Saúde, Datasus. Rio de Janeiro, RJ
  • Tamara Jurberg Salgado Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Programa de Oncobiologia. Rio de Janeiro, RJ
  • Lilian Thomer Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Programa de Oncobiologia. Rio de Janeiro, RJ
  • Claudia Jurberg Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Programa de Oncobiologia, Instituto de Bioquímica Médica Leopoldo de Meis. Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brasil. Fundação Oswaldo Cruz, Instituto Oswaldo Cruz. Rio de Janeiro, RJ http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3607-7299

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.29397/reciis.v13i4.1776

Keywords:

Cancer, Social media, Instagram, Use and gratification, Emojis.

Abstract

Cancer is a disease still associated with pain, death and suffering and many people, afraid of a diagnosis, adopt dodging behavior from doctors and tests. Despite this phenomenon as old as the disease, the emergence of social media has brought the topic to platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, among others. T77he goal of this study is to determine if there is a cancer content standard that creates more engagement on Instagram. Two Brazilian cancer institutions Instagram profiles were selected and a qualitative study of content analysis was applied, later associating it with statistical analysis. During four years, the entire contents of two Brazilian cancer hospitals were selected, totaling 1,935 posts on Instagram. In addition to the posts produced by the two institutions, we sought to understand user behavior on this media when the topic is cancer, through 2,239 comments and 4,603 Emojis. Given the fact that the two profiles attract about 120,000 users, we can affirm that there is interest on the topic, Internet users address the topic with no prejudice and many seek different ways of gratification using the app.

Author Biographies

Eloy Macchiute de Oliveira, Ministério da Saúde, Datasus. Rio de Janeiro, RJ

Mestrado em Políticas Públicas e Formação Humana pela Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro.

Tamara Jurberg Salgado, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Programa de Oncobiologia. Rio de Janeiro, RJ

Mestrado em Relações Internacionais pela Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro.

Lilian Thomer, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Programa de Oncobiologia. Rio de Janeiro, RJ

Especialização em Software pelo Instituto Technion.

Claudia Jurberg, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Programa de Oncobiologia, Instituto de Bioquímica Médica Leopoldo de Meis. Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brasil. Fundação Oswaldo Cruz, Instituto Oswaldo Cruz. Rio de Janeiro, RJ

Doutorado em Educação, Gestão e Difusão em Biociências pela Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro.

Downloads

Published

2019-12-20

How to Cite

Oliveira, E. M. de, Salgado, T. J., Thomer, L., & Jurberg, C. (2019). Hope vs. suffering on social media: what motivates people on Instagram to follow topics in cancer?. Revista Eletrônica De Comunicação, Informação & Inovação Em Saúde, 13(4). https://doi.org/10.29397/reciis.v13i4.1776

Issue

Vol. 13 No. 4 (2019): Dossiê Saúde, etnicidades e diversidade cultural: comunicação, territórios e resistências

Section

Original articles

License

Author’s rights:  The author retains unrestricted rights over his work.

Rights to reuse: Reciis adopts the Creative Commons License, CC BY-NC non-commercial attribution according to the Policy on Open Access to Knowledge by Oswaldo Cruz Foundation. With this license, access, download, copy, print, share, reuse, and distribution of articles is allowed, provided that it is for non-commercial use and with source citation, granting proper authorship credits and reference to Reciis. In such cases, no permission is required from the authors or editors.

Rights of authors’s deposit / self-archiving: The authors are encouraged to deposit the published version, along with the link of their article in Reciis, in institutional repositories.