Information Landscape on Cervical Cancer: An Analysis of News and Online Platform Data in the Republic of Korea

This study examined the information landscape on cervical cancer by employing the extended cancer infodemiology framework and integrated analysis. We analyzed and compared news articles and online platform posts as the two primary sources of health information regarding cancer. Data were collected from BigKinds, a news article database, and blogs and café posts on Naver, which dominates the health information search market in Korea. We analyzed 68,977 documents (news <i>n</i> = 1,043, blog posts <i>n</i> = 56,455, café posts <i>n</i> = 11,479) using traditional manual coding, frequency analysis, and topic modeling to address our research questions. Results show that the key topics differ between news articles and online platform posts on cervical cancer. News covered the "development and clinical trials of treatment" prominently, while recommended hospitals for checkups (blogs) and seeking recommendations for OB/GYN clinics (cafés) were prominent in online platforms. The Cervical Cancer Awareness Month could not influence the frequency or topic of news articles or online platform posts on cervical cancer in Korea. Moreover, the findings show that the dominant engagers were economic daily newspapers (news articles), hospital accounts (blogs), and the cafés on family and childrearing. This study offers empirical evidence of differing pictures across digital platforms. Furthermore, it discusses the possibility that dominant engagers or their interests could have influenced different pictures in the information landscape on cervical cancer.