Cancer Communication and User Engagement on Chinese Social Media: Content Analysis and Topic Modeling Study

BACKGROUND: Cancer ranks among the most serious public health challenges worldwide. In China—the world’s most populous country—about one-quarter of the population consists of people with cancer. Social media has become an important platform that the Chinese public uses to express opinions. OBJECTIVE: We investigated cancer-related discussions on the Chinese social media platform Weibo (Sina Corporation) to identify cancer topics that generate the highest levels of user engagement. METHODS: We conducted topic modeling and regression analyses to analyze and visualize cancer-related messages on Weibo and to examine the relationships between different cancer topics and user engagement (ie, the number of retweets, comments, and likes). RESULTS: Our results revealed that cancer communication on Weibo has generally focused on the following six topics: social support, cancer treatment, cancer prevention, women’s cancers, smoking and skin cancer, and other topics. Discussions about social support and cancer treatment attracted the highest number of users and received the greatest numbers of retweets, comments, and likes. CONCLUSIONS: Our investigation of cancer-related communication on Weibo provides valuable insights into public concerns about cancer and can help guide the development of health campaigns in social media.