MKT-555-X3009 Social Media Marketing 23TW3
By: Aerial Johnson
Every year in October National Breast Cancer Awareness Month is celebrated. There is typically always a large amount of support for this cause and social media is always involved. This includes various memes that circulate around Facebook in order to help spread awareness. These memes had women posting things like their name and a color which corresponded to the color of their bra. This would confuse their male friends who would go on Facebook and see these posts and not understand what it was all about. Memes like this became extremely popular all over Facebook and even began to make national news. It allows people to have fun with their own personalized message but also do their part in raising awareness for breast cancer.
The women were able to make these posts that men were completely puzzled by which made it really fun for them and the men were also following the trend trying to decipher what these posts meant. This was something that everyone could participate in and enjoy, one of the key reasons things like this go viral on the internet.
However, for many these breast cancer memes have raised awareness and become a public announcement for the world, but it has not really done much to make a difference in finding a cure for the disease. Lack of awareness was not always the biggest problem with breast cancer. What these viral memes failed to do was direct people to places where they could make donations and give information regarding the initiative’s goals. In 2012, over 2,000 men were diagnosed with breast cancer and over 400 men died from it in the United States (Mahoney & Tang, 2016).
When communicating about breast cancer, your audience may be diverse. Consider the information most useful to the relevant groups. Certain groups experience disparities in breast cancer screening, incidence, mortality, and survival (National Cancer Institute, 2020). Cancer health disparities are complex and affected by various factors, such as, social determinants of health, behavior, biology, genetics, and more (National Cancer Institute, 2020). Communication-related issues may also play a role in cancer disparities (White-Means and Osmani, 2017)
References:
Authored by GW Cancer Center. (n.d.). Breast Cancer Awareness Month campaign. School of Medicine and Health Sciences. Retrieved February 26, 2023, from https://cancercontroltap.smhs.gwu.edu/resources/breast-cancer-awareness-month-campaign
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