Creating health awareness: a social media enabled collaboration

Social media has been an enabler of information dissemination, collaboration and coordination for reasons ranging from personal to political. In healthcare, the context we study here, information dissemination is a key mechanism of creating awareness, a crucial factor in the early detection and prevention of diseases. Thus, in this paper, we look at the role of social media in creating cancer awareness. In particular, we use a multiple case study analysis to examine how individuals and organizations use social media to collaborate to promote such awareness. We find that social media is used to create an online community that drives the creation of cancer awareness in many different ways and for multiple purposes. This research has implications for healthcare organizations in particular, who are looking to use social media to promote awareness, as well as other organizations who may want to use social media in this way.