Content analysis of cancer blog posts

Objectives: The efficacy of user-defined subject tagging and software-generated subject tagging for describing and organizing cancer blog contents was explored. Methods: The Technorati search engine was used to search the blogosphere for cancer blog postings generated during a two-month period. Postings were mined for relevant subject concepts, and blogger-defined tags and Text Analysis Portal for Research (TAPoR) software-defined tags were generated for each message. Descriptive data were collected, and the blogger-defined tags were compared with software-generated tags. Three standard vocabularies (Opinion Templates, Basic Resource, and Medical Subject Headings [MeSH] Resource) were used to assign subject terms to the blogs, with results compared for efficacy in information retrieval. Results: Descriptive data showed that most of the studied cancer blogs (80%) contained fewer than 500 words each. The numbers of blogger-defined tags per posting (M=4.49 per posting) were significantly smaller than the TAPoR keywords (M=23.55 per posting). Both blogger-defined subject tags and software-generated subject tags were often overly broad or overly narrow in focus, producing less than effective search results for those seeking to extract information from cancer blogs. Conclusions: Additional exploration into methods for systematically organizing cancer blog postings is necessary if blogs are to become stable and efficacious information resources for cancer patients, friends, families, or providers.