Abstracts

Rationale: Approximately 2.8 million Americans suffer from breast cancer, and 2.7 Americans are estimated to suffer from epilepsy. The breast cancer movement has been successful in increasing public awareness and reducing stigma through successful advocacy including use of websites and social media. A comparison of Facebook pages between these conditions was undertaken to determine differences which might lead to improvements in using social networking for education and advocacy in epilepsy. Methods: On March 1, 2013, the search function of Facebook was used by entering the terms epilepsy and breast cancer . The results included 100 Facebook pages for each of the terms. Each page was then reviewed and information was collected on the number of likes , talking about this , were here , users for apps, date joined, category, and appearance of Facebook profile picture. Results: The mean number of likes for the epilepsy Facebook pages was 6,074 (range, 52-256,117), with 43% of the total 589,184 likes for the epilepsy pages being for the first webpage. The average number of likes for the breast cancer pages was 108,300 (range, 224-3,747,448), with 36% of the total 10,288,5224 likes for the breast cancer Facebook pages being for the first website. The total number of Talking about this was 25,371 for the epilepsy pages and 486,418 for the breast cancer pages. The number of were here was 2331 for the epilepsy pages, while the epilepsy pages had 1394. The breast cancer sites offered 7 apps that had 7320 active monthly users, while the 2 epilepsy apps had 93 active monthly users. 86% of the breast cancer profile pictures featured the color pink. 57% of the Facebook profile pictures included the image of a ribbon and 9% included the image of a breast. 31% of the epilepsy profile pictures featured the color red and 30% featured the color purple. 20% of the epilepsy profile pictures included the image of a ribbon, 20% included the image of a flame, 7% included the image of a brain, and 5% included the image of an EEG. Conclusions: Overall the 100 breast cancer Facebook pages had 17.5 times the number of likes as the epilepsy pages, which suggests Facebook users are expressing a greater interest in breast cancer. The breast cancer pages had 19 times the talking about this as the epilepsy page, which reflects a greater likelihood for Facebook users to make comments or link to the breast cancer pages. However, the difference in were here for the breast cancer pages was only 1.6 times the number of the epilepsy pages, suggesting that when it came to physically attending an event or visiting an organization the difference between the two groups was much less. The profile pictures for the breast cancer pages were more consistent in color schemes and themes, and it is likely that the iconic pink ribbon contributed to the number of likes associated with the breast cancer pages. Epilepsy advocacy groups should consider adopting a more coherent visual theme and using more active content focused on education about epilepsy.