Digital Platforms and Public Emotion: Mapping the Dissemination and Emotional Reception of Breast Cancer Awareness Campaigns in Urban Pakistan

Abstract

This study investigates the role of digital platforms in disseminating breast cancer awareness messages and examines how urban Pakistani women emotionally receive and interpret these campaigns. With digital media increasingly central to public health communication, understanding the interplay between platform choice and audience emotional response is critical for campaign effectiveness. Drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews with 40 educated women from Islamabad and Rawalpindi, alongside content analysis of social media campaigns from 2022 to 2025, this research maps the primary digital channels such as Instagram, YouTube, WhatsApp, and Twitter that utilized for awareness dissemination. Findings reveal that while platforms like Instagram and YouTube dominate awareness efforts, the emotional reception of messages varies significantly based on platform affordances, language accessibility, and source credibility. Survivor narratives and emotionally charged content generated the strongest affective responses, yet message fatigue and cultural taboos frequently hindered deeper engagement. The study concludes that effective digital health communication must balance emotional appeal with actionable guidance, linguistic inclusivity, and sustained year-round presence. These findings offer critical insights for public health practitioners, NGOs, and policymakers seeking to optimize digital breast cancer awareness strategies in Pakistan and similar Global South contexts.

Keywords: Digital platforms, Dissemination, Emotional reception, Breast cancer awareness, Pakistan, Social media, Public health communication