Retweeting in health promotion: Analysis of tweets about Breast Cancer Awareness Month

Recent years have seen an increase in the use of Twitter for health promotion, yet little research has been done to understand the factors that facilitate the sharing or retweeting of health messages. The goals of this study were twofold: (a) to identify the major themes contained in tweets about the campaign under investigation and (b) to understand the roles of retweeting in a health campaign as well as factors that contribute to the wide dissemination of campaign messages on Twitter. Tweets that included the campaign hashtag of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, #bcam, were collected using the firehose method (N = 1018). Findings revealed that many more tweets were posted about the promotional goals of fundraising or sales events than about the educational goals of teaching and raising awareness about breast cancer. Findings also showed that tweets with photos or images exhibited greater retweetability compared to those without them, whereas the inclusion of hyperlinks or videos did not affect retweetability. The results of the current study shed light on our understanding of the ways Twitter is used in health promotion and offer practical implications regarding strategic use of Twitter for health campaigns.