Using Social Media for Prostate Cancer Care Education: Descriptive Insights from a Multi-Platform Campaign
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: Background: Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer among men worldwide and disproportionately affects Black men, underscoring the need for scalable, culturally responsive education and outreach. Social media offer broad, low-cost reach; however, little is known about how organizational accounts perform when used to deliver prostate cancer education. Objective: This study aimed to describe the implementation, reach, observable audience characteristics, and platform-level engagement of the multi-platform prostate cancer education campaign operated by the Inclusive Cancer Care Research Equity (iCCaRE) for Black Men Consortium on X/Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, and to identify the content types associated with the highest engagement on each platform. Methods: An observational descriptive design using cumulative platform analytics was employed. Data were extracted from YouTube Studio, Meta Business Suite (Facebook), and X/Twitter Analytics, covering each account from its first published post in 2023 to May 31, 2026. All content was disseminated organically with no paid promotion or boosted posts. Reach indicators (impressions, views, followers, and subscriber counts) and engagement indicators (likes, comments, reposts, watch time, and profile visits) were summarized descriptively, together with the age, gender, and geographic data reported by each platform. Top-performing content was ranked on the reach metric reported by each platform and compared within platforms. Because the data were aggregate platform counts rather than individual-level observations, no inferential statistics or confidence intervals were computed. Results: On YouTube, 116 videos attracted 1,301 subscribers, 14,600 views, and 1,153.9 hours of watch time; the most viewed content was the Prostate House of Humor (6,105 views; 583 likes). The Facebook page (250 posts; 285 followers) had 3,000 views and reached a predominantly male audience (57.3%), largely aged 25–34 and 35–44 years, and concentrated in Nigeria (88.2%); its highest-performing post was a 2024 Science of Advanced Prostate Cancer Conference flyer (522 views). The X/Twitter account posted 4,003 posts, generating 126,300 impressions, and 11,339 engagements. Humor- and story-driven videos on YouTube, plain language education on X/Twitter, and community event promotion on Facebook showed the highest reach on their respective platforms. Conclusions: These findings suggest that social media platforms can support scalable prostate cancer education and outreach. YouTube, Facebook, and X/Twitter serve distinct, complementary functions in disseminating prostate cancer education, with humor, storytelling, and plain-language explanations achieving the greatest reach.
Source: Preprints.org
Language: English
Subfield: Health
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7212226318