Mapping the Discourse Network of Cervical Cancer Screening on Reddit: A Topic-Network Approach

Abstract

Online health communities are a primary venue where the public interprets cervical cancer screening, yet how peer discourse, which has no editorial authority, bundles screening concerns remains unclear. Drawing on network agenda setting (NAS), this study treats a peer community as a collective agenda-setter and asks how it organizes screening topics. This paper analyzes 9,851 posts and comments from seven women's-health subreddits (August 2025 to January 2026) using Latent Dirichlet Allocation and the Analysis of Topic Model Networks, with Spearman topic-loading similarity filtered to a significant backbone. Thirteen topics form three communities: a diagnostic-information agenda, an embodied exam-experience agenda, and a narrative-and-support agenda. Embodied, temporally anchored concerns hold them together: timing and bleeding, pelvic pain, and access carry the highest betweenness. Sentiment follows network position, with support positive and cancer risk negative. These findings extend NAS to agenda-less, peer-driven settings and map how health agendas emerge from the bottom up.

Details

Cite

Peng, Q. (2026). Mapping the discourse network of cervical cancer screening on Reddit: A topic-network approach. SocArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/e49jy_v1

@misc{peng2026cervical,
  author    = {Peng, Qiyao},
  title     = {Mapping the Discourse Network of Cervical Cancer Screening on Reddit: A Topic-Network Approach},
  year      = {2026},
  publisher = {SocArXiv},
  doi       = {10.31235/osf.io/e49jy_v1},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/e49jy_v1}
}