Mapping breast cancer survivors’ psychosocial coping along disease trajectory: A language approach

Abstract

This article reports a language analysis of breast cancer patients’ posts in an online support group. Adopting web-scraping techniques, the study analyzed 27,078 online posts contributed by 1443 users along multiple linguistic dimensions to investigate the trajectory of the patients’ psychosocial adaptation of the disease. The findings suggested that breast cancer patients’ emotional experiences and adjustment in the course of illness vary from one stage to another. They reached the peak of emotional expression, struggle and despair, and self-focus at Stage III, whereas wiped out negative emotions and signaled a desire for connections with others at Stage IV.