Soon I'll be turning thirty, and like my friends and acquaintances, I expect to get a letter in the post around that time. The sender: Bevolkingsonderzoek Nederland. With an invitation for a pap smear to screen for early stage or advanced cervical cancer. A somewhat confrontational invitation, but an important one to respond to.
When it comes to prevention, the Netherlands has three screening programmes: for cervical, breast, and bowel cancer. These programmes have proven effective in screening for cancer, and this is very important: early detection of cancer allows for better treatment options. Many people take part in these programmes: for 3 million invitations being sent out every year, 2 million respondents take part in the screening.
The media often report on these screening programmes. They write about the importance of screening and the risks associated with these analyses, and share stories of health professionals and participants in the screening programmes. The topic is also discussed on social media, with famous and less famous people sharing their personal stories, facts (both true and false), and opinions about the importance of screening.
These news reports and social media discussions may affect public perception of and people’s willingness to take part in screening programmes. But how does this work exactly? That is something we actually know very little about. With our multidisciplinary team consisting of communication scientists and language engineering experts, we investigate the relationship between how screening programmes are covered in the news, the conversations people have about it on social media, and their perception of, and willingness to take part in, screening programmes.
We do this by manually and automatically coding a large database of news reports and social media posts from 2010 until today. In this way, we investigate what people write about the topic, what tone they use, how this changes over time (or not), and how it relates to public perception of and participation in screening programmes.
By knowing what people write and talk about, and how this affects public perception of and participation in these programmes, we can formulate recommendations on how to help the public take informed decisions about participating in screening programmes. In this way, we contribute to prevention by promoting early detection of cancer.