Social Media and Health

The health communication landscape has been revolutionized by the emergence of social media platforms, requiring researchers to consider their impact on cancer-related attitudes and behaviors. HCIRB has been at the forefront of supporting research at the intersection of social media and health, engaging with scholars and practitioners on topics such as:

• Surveillance and descriptive research to characterize user-generated content and interactions relevant to cancer using innovative techniques like machine learning and natural language processing approaches, network analysis, and mixed methods content analysis.

  These studies can generate insights into:

  • Perceptions of, and attitudes towards, various cancer-related topics, products, and events
  • Health behaviors and the social contexts in which they occur
  • Marketing strategies used to promote products that increase cancer risk
  • Access to quality cancer information

• Leveraging social media for cancer prevention and control interventions.

  Researchers use social media for:  

  • Recruitment of participants
  • Delivery of health behavior interventions
  • Message testing

• Ethical considerations for conducting research on social media, including using social media interactions as a data source and using social media platforms to deliver interventions. 

[For a discussion of considerations related to applying NIH guidance on human subjects research to work that uses social media data, please refer to this document]

• Practical challenges to conducting research using social media.

Notices of Funding Opportunities