Discourse about human papillomavirus (HPV)-associated oropharyngeal cancer (OPC) on Twitter: Lessons for public health education about OPC and dental care

OBJECTIVES: Public understanding of human papillomavirus (HPV)-associated oropharyngeal cancer (OPC) is minimally understood. Therefore uncovering communication gaps between the public and healthcare professionals regarding this disease is vital. Social media provide an unobtrusive way to understand public perception about health issues. STUDY DESIGN: Computer-assisted quantitative content analysis. METHODS: Tweets about HPV-associated OPC (N = 3,112) were collected for 40 weeks using the standard real-time streaming Application Programming Interface (API). The collection of tweets was not limited to one specific geographic location but worldwide. All tweets were entered into nVivo 12.0 to conduct computer-assisted quantitative content analysis. We used an inductive method to develop a coding scheme and examined the frequency of specific keywords, terms, and phrases in texts. RESULTS: Findings show that (a) the majority of discourse on Twitter focused on risk factors and prevention with little information on diagnosis, treatment, and prognoses; (b) many tweets promoted HPV vaccination among boys and emphasized the risk of HPV-associated OPC among males; (c) the role of dental care professionals in the prevention and detection of OPC minimally appeared; (d) the public referred to OPC as oral cancer, head and neck cancer, or throat cancer; and (e) health organizations in New Zealand, Australia, and the United Kingdom led the discussion on HPV-associated OPC on Twitter. CONCLUSIONS: The current study unravels the utility of social media data and data mining techniques in understanding public perception and understanding of HPC-associated OPC. The outcomes from the current study provide baseline knowledge of where communication gaps exist in terms of HPV-associated OPC, without which the planning of potential interventions and much-needed social media-based campaigns cannot be effectively undertaken.