Content analysis of Twitter skin cancer awareness campaign “SunSmart”

Over the past years, social media communication has received a lot of attention with many organizations trying to take advantage of the new ways to understand people and their needs. Many health organizations joined social media to promote their campaigns, interact with their customers and share their messages. Skin cancer campaign "SunSmart" is one of them. However, little is known about the opinions expressed by individuals during those campaigns. This paper uses sentiment and content analysis with the goal of analyzing the tweets generated by people in regard to skin cancer. It uses the Health Belief Model as a framework when examining the tweets. Results indicate that the Health Belief Model is difficult to apply in individuals’ online activity and few of the tweets fall under the five proposed categories by the model. It nonetheless gives some clear understanding of the informative nature of the tweets and the little personal opinion expressed online. The results are of use for businesses as they help them recognize the main topics generated and could potentially assist in optimizing the way campaigns share their messages.