Latinos, the largest minority in the U.S., face a high burden of cancer, making it important to deliver evidence-based cancer prevention and screening information (CPSI) to them. Social media presents an innovative platform to engage with Latinos dialogically by allowing user interaction through posts, pictures, videos, and other information sharing. Due to its popularity, Facebook is a useful platform for Latinos without a history of cancer to engage with CPSI. This is particularly important among Latinos age 40-75, as they are eligible for breast, prostate, and/or colorectal cancer screenings. However, there is a dearth in scholarship exploring how Latinos engage with and act upon content encountered on social media, which may be influenced by cultural values. This qualitatively-driven, mixed methods dissertation explored how U.S. Latinos engage with, assess the credibility of, and act upon CPSI on Facebook.
During one-on-one, in-person encounters, participants (n=20) accessed their Facebook profiles and discussed engagement with cancer-related posts with the researcher. Engagement with content prompted semi-structured, in-depth interviews discussing reasons for engagement, credibility assessments, and subsequent actions. Data were analyzed via content analysis and thematic analysis. Results demonstrate that cultural values and other cultural connectors (e.g., language and country of origin) play a salient role in how message factors and source factors influence the way Latinos engage with and assess the credibility of CPSI. Furthermore, both engagement and credibility assessments – as influenced by culture – appear to impact how some Latinos choose to act upon CPSI, both online and offline. Actions taken were sometimes informed by inaccurate credibility assessments, which may lead to potentially harmful outcomes. Findings provide important methodological, theoretical, and practical contributions to a growing area of public health research that is interested in curtailing the effects of misinformation on health outcomes
