#tscsm the Unifying Testicular Cancer Hashtag

by Michael Craycraft

#tscsm hashtag for testicular cancer


Hashtags have been used for quite some time on social media to mark and aggregate posts; turning them into searchable topics and channels. The first use of a hashtag dates back to 2007.  

 

The use of hashtags continues to grow across many platforms and can even be funny and entertaining at times. However, the use of hashtags for medical conditions, such as testicular cancer, has not been uniformly developed and this provides an opportunity for improvement.  

 

To be useful, hashtags should be unique, identifiable and short. Unfortunately, on platforms such as Twitter #testicularcancer is just too many characters. The use of #balls or #nuts is too generic to provide usefulness for someone searching for testicular cancer information and may yield images you'd rather not see. Likewise, if you are looking for cancer information on Twitter a search for #cancer will result in a plethora of topics and you will end up reading more posts about astrology than you will about clinical or support topics related to cancer.

 

Realizing these deficiencies, Dr. Matthew Katz proposed a hashtag folksonomy for cancer communities back in 2013. After some collaboration and refinement, a systematic approach was developed for site-specific cancers, based on the #bcsm hashtag that has been used for several years for breast cancer.

 

We've communicated with Dr. Katz over the years and fully support his ontological system, which is also being accepted by other major institutions such as ASCO, MD Anderson, and the American Urological Association. We hope that you will join us in using #tscsm when making posts related to testicular cancer.

 

The hashtag comes from TeSticular Cancer Social Media (#tscsm) and allows individuals to quickly locate information about testicular cancer without having to wade through the plethora of other unrelated posts.

 

The cancer tag ontology is summarized on Symplur and will allow organizations and patients to connect based on the unique tags.

 

Thanks Dr. Katz, et al. for your hard work to make cancer information more accessible and useful to patients, clinicians, and organizations on social media platforms.

 

#tscsm for Now,

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