HMN 2025: How TikTok creators carry out ‘roles’ when sharing their hereditary cancer tales, shaping the well being info they share

A brand new study has explored how folks with hereditary cancer determine on TikTok.

The study, published within the journal Social Media + Society, focuses on two hereditary cancer situations: BReast CAncer (BRCA) and Lynch Syndrome—carriers of which have a a lot larger disposition to getting sure kinds of cancer of their lifetime.

Researchers carried out a qualitative content material evaluation on 100 TikTok movies and located that id is carried out by the adoption of “roles”; by enjoying elements and adopting characters in sure conditions and contexts.

Content creators had been discovered to play varied roles when speaking about hereditary cancer together with the celebrator, the defender, and the mentor.

Explaining how these practices have implications for social media customers, Dr. Hannah Ditchfield and Dr. Stefania Vicari, from the School of Sociological Studies, Politics and International Relations, stated, “Our evaluation supplies perception into the kind of content material customers are uncovered to when looking for info and help in relation to their hereditary cancer analysis on TikTok.”

This study appears at cancer communication, particularly in relation to hereditary cancer and social media, and provides to discussions on how current understandings of id efficiency are being challenged by the altering logics of TikTok: a platform argued to be much less about social connection and interpersonal interplay and pushed by distinctive algorithmic processes.

Dr. Ditchfield and Dr. Vicari added, “While acknowledging the significance of labor that has highlighted adjustments in sociality on TikTok, our findings have prompted us to argue that we should always not dismiss the relevance and existence of interpersonal interplay and related ideas in id efficiency on this platform.”