Background:

Infertility affects one in six couples. New digital resources exist which enable the study of lived experience of persons with infertility. Blogging represents a forum for sharing narratives and experiences. To provide high quality care for persons with a history of infertility, it is crucial to ascertain what they value as significant in their situation. Blogs with a focus on infertility may provide this information.

Objectives:

The aim of this study was to gain insight into which infertility-related issues are discussed on Swedish infertility blogs.

Methods:

In total, 70 infertility blogs were identified on the Internet and 25 met the inclusion criteria. A quantitative–qualitative content analysis was performed with the support of the Gavagai Explorer text analysis software.

Results:

A total of 4508 postings were retrieved from the blogs, all of which were written by women. The outcome of the analysis resulted into the following topics: Emotions (16.8%), Relations (12.5%), Time and waiting (7.1%), Body (6.6%), Care and treatment (4.2%), Food and diet (1.4%) and Exercise (0.5%). For most topics, there was a balance between positive and negative statements, but the body topic stood out by having more negative than positive sentiment.

Conclusion:

By considering the topics expressed in blogs, health care personnel are provided with an opportunity to better understand the situation of individuals affected by infertility.

Search results

Social media in the infertile community—using a text analysis tool to identify the topics of discussion on the multitude of infertility blogs