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People who are affected by cancer can benefit greatly from social support and digital social networks, though our understanding of online support is primarily founded in dominant platforms like Facebook. In addition, while previous scholarship indicates that social support is available online, little research has examined predictors of support prov...
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... A growing amount of literature on digital empathy shows the measurable impact of virtual empathy on individuals and communities. A Web of Science keyword search for "digital empathy" and "virtual empathy" indicates a growing body of literature over the last twenty years, particularly in educational research (Chen, 2018;Redden and Way, 2017;Wambsganss et al., 2021;Friesem, 2016); the medical literature (Terry and Cain, 2016;Sperandeo et al., 2021), and communications studies (Deri et al., 2018;Hale et al., 2020;Ravishankar, 2021;Lovell et al., 2022;Zhou and Jurgens, 2020;Sharma et al., 2021). ...
... In the study fields that intersect with communications literature, the predictability potential of digital empathy arises as an essential question (Deri et al., 2018;Hale et al., 2020;Ravishankar, 2021;Lovell et al., 2022;Zhou and Jurgens, 2020;Sharma et al., 2020Sharma et al., , 2021. For example, the factors influencing digital empathy have been investigated for individuals with limited mobility (e.g., cancer patients) and groups with weak offline support (e.g., marginalized farmers in remote regions and anorexia patients). ...
... For example, the factors influencing digital empathy have been investigated for individuals with limited mobility (e.g., cancer patients) and groups with weak offline support (e.g., marginalized farmers in remote regions and anorexia patients). Hale et al. (2020) explored the predictors of digital empathic support for social media posts created by cancer patients, reporting how the construction of online narratives influences the reception of digital empathic support. Ravishankar (2021) investigated digital platforms' potential to generate empathy and collect small loans for marginalized farmers to fight poverty in India, while a study by Lovell et al. (2022) examined the role of empathy-based communication in public organization communications during COVID-19. ...
... Users publish messages and images to support patients, share experiences of treatment, or participate in fund-raising campaigns for cancer research. During these months, thousands of images mention breast cancer, a site that achieves high levels of engagement on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook (Vraga et al., 2018), as well as on Imgur (Hale et al., 2020). Other cancer sites, such as skin cancer, also receive attention (Banerjee et al., 2018). ...
... From the perspective of patients, Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter enhance the relationship with health practitioners (Gentile et al., 2018). They also facilitate the understanding and management of symptoms (Bender et al., 2013), provide clarity and support through the different phases of treatment (Attai et al., 2015;Banerjee et al., 2018), support the building of communities of exchange (Zade et al., 2017), and alleviate the feeling of loneliness during and after treatment (Hale et al., 2020;Skrabal Ross et al., 2020). ...
... The finding comes with a warning, however: social media is useful when research goes beyond commonly studied platforms, when it includes the perspectives of underprivileged groups, and when it expands the reach of study to cancer sites that are less present in public communications (Grant & Hundley, 2008;Hale et al., 2020;Macdonald et al., 2018). ...
This paper presents a systematic review of the discourses that emerge from the study of cancer images posted by patients and caregivers on Instagram, Imgur, Pinterest, Twitter and Facebook. It presents the types of images that posters use to visualise cancer and how they are perceived by viewers. Results indicate that three factors affect visibility and engagement: (a) the framing, (b) the purpose, and (c) the emotions portrayed. They also show that viewers prefer images that (a) show the patient improving their condition through treatment, (b) tell a personal story and (c) take on an optimistic tone. This type of image reflects the common idea of the cancer patient as a survivor, which is particularly visible in breast cancer posts. For patients faced with uncertainty, fear or frustration, the standardisation of survivorship images may challenge identity-formation and create a sense of isolation. However, we also find that patients who use photographs to express negative emotions (such as sadness or frustration) are met with emotional support from viewers. Our findings show that, beyond virality and standardised discourses, visual social media and photography can provide a positive venue for the communication of more diverse cancer experiences from patients and caregivers. Highlights • Social media-cancer is a rich field, but little attention has been given to the specific role of images. • Current studies are divided between the biomedical and social approaches, making it challenging to establish a conversation. • Few of the published papers use images to communicate their results, despite studying visual communications. • Images that show cancer as a journey are met with positive reactions in most social media. • Images that provide general information about cancer perform best on Twitter and Pinterest. • Social media favours positive emotions, but negative emotions also find home and support. • Mixed methods can help predict the (algorithmic) performance of images while also accounting for their individual perception. • Situating social media images of cancer in three discursive lines may help predict their impact.
... Y es que, como explica Rebeca Pardo, las auto-patografías visuales ofrecen "un tipo de fotografía más doméstica y familiar que […] ofrece una vía de réplica a cierta imaginería que hasta [entonces] parecía incontestable" (Pardo, 2019, p. 30). Así, la fotografía da a los pacientes la oportunidad de reflexionar sobre su propia enfermedad y de presentar un discurso sobre su cuerpo, su vida y su identidad (De Noronha, 2019;Hale et al., 2020;Henriksen et al., 2011;Plage, 2020Plage, , 2022Tembeck, 2016). Mientras que los discursos dominantes a menudo niegan emociones como la apatía o la incertidumbre, la fotografía autorreferencial permite expresarlas con libertad (Gómez-Arrieta y Silva-Salazar, 2017). ...
... Los resultados de Stage tienen reflejo en trabajos realizados en torno a otros tipos de cáncer, como el análisis del perfil de la modelo Elly Mayday, fallecida a causa de un cáncer de ovario (Tetteh, 2021). Desde un plano cuantitativo, otros trabajos destacan cómo las imágenes en Instagram o Pinterest pueden motivar los comportamientos preventivos contra el cáncer de piel (De La Garza et al., 2021;Noar et al., 2018); cómo las emociones y los contenidos de las imágenes relacionadas con el cáncer pueden afectar a la percepción de quienes las ven (Cho et al., 2018); o cómo las características visuales de un post en la red Imgur pueden predecir el tipo de respuesta que recibirán (Hale et al., 2020). ...
Este artículo presenta un estudio de métodos mixtos del perfil de Instagram de Olatz Vázquez, fotógrafa y periodista que falleció a los 27 años a causa de un cáncer de estómago y que ayudó a visibilizar uno de los tipos de cáncer más letales y menos presentes en redes sociales digitales. Sus imágenes, en blanco y negro, retratan las secuelas físicas y emocionales del cáncer y contrastan con los discursos habituales del cáncer, generalmente apoyados en imágenes positivas. El análisis de contenidos revela discursos visuales en torno a (1) la representación del cáncer como amenaza y aislamiento; (2) la distorsión de la identidad que supone para la paciente; (3) las respuestas agentivas de la paciente ante la enfermedad; y (4) la importancia del entorno social. Se espera que los resultados contribuyan a visibilizar el cáncer gástrico y a motivar una discusión sobre los discursos visuales dominantes en su comunicación social.
... Moreover, telling personal illness narratives helps patients to better cope with the illness (Carlick and Biley, 2004) and for health care professionals to better understand the illness (Kalitzkus and Matthiessen, 2009). Given that social media has become a widely used platform for cancer patients and their caregivers to share stories and connect with others (Gage-Bouchard et al., 2017;Hale et al., 2020), it is critical to understand what cancer narratives are told on social media and how they engage social media users. ...
Narratives have been shown to be an effective way to communicate health risks and promote health behavior change, and given the growing amount of health information being shared on social media, it is crucial to study health- related narratives in social media. However, expert identification of a large number of narrative texts is a time consuming process, and larger scale studies on the use of narratives may be enabled through automatic text classification approaches. Prior work has demonstrated that automatic narrative detection is possible, but modern deep learning approaches have not been used for this task in the domain of online health communities. Therefore, in this paper, we explore the use of deep learning methods to automatically classify the presence of narratives in social media posts, finding that they outperform previously proposed approaches. We also find that in many cases, these models generalize well across posts from different health organizations. Finally, in order to better understand the increase in performance achieved by deep learning models, we use feature analysis techniques to explore the features that most contribute to narrative detection for posts in online health communities.
Communication is increasingly taking place in Facebook Groups around the world. Yet, we have little scientific knowledge of Facebook Groups at scale, especially the extent to which general systemic gendering is a pattern in participation in such groups. This knowledge deficit is problematic for digitalized and data-driven democratic societies. Therefore, this article aims to investigate gender differences in open, closed, and secret Facebook Groups. The study relies on a unique large-scale Facebook Group dataset from a sample that reflects the gender of Facebook users and the Facebook Groups they belong to in both Denmark and South Korea. By applying Bayesian models and developing a notion of participation that consists of both structural and actual participation, the study finds that the relation between country, gender, and participation is strongly modulated by gender differences. Females are more engaged than males in Denmark, while the opposite is true for South Korea. In both countries, privacy affects females’ participation more than males’. This article contributes to the field by presenting new large-scale findings that explore gender differences on three levels of Facebook Group privacy settings (open, closed, and secret) in a hitherto understudied communication space and, by doing so, it highlights the importance of privacy and country in predicting systemic gendering.
