@inproceedings{liu-etal-2024-breaking,
    title = "Breaking the Silence: How Online Forums Address Lung Cancer Stigma and Offer Support",
    author = "Liu, Jiahe  and
      Conway, Mike  and
      Lozoya, Daniel Cabrera",
    editor = "Baldwin, Tim  and
      Rodr{\'i}guez M{\'e}ndez, Sergio Jos{\'e}  and
      Kuo, Nicholas",
    booktitle = "Proceedings of the 22nd Annual Workshop of the Australasian Language Technology Association",
    month = dec,
    year = "2024",
    address = "Canberra, Australia",
    publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
    url = "https://preview.aclanthology.org/fix-sig-urls/2024.alta-1.15/",
    pages = "179--188",
    abstract = "Lung cancer remains a leading cause of cancer-related deaths, but public support for individuals living with lung cancer is often constrained by stigma and misconceptions, leading to serious emotional and social consequences for those diagnosed. Understanding how this stigma manifests and affects individuals is vital for developing inclusive interventions. Online discussion forums offer a unique opportunity to examine how lung cancer stigma is expressed and experienced. This study combines qualitative analysis and unsupervised learning (topic modelling) to explore stigma-related content within an online lung cancer forum. Our findings highlight the role of online forums as a key space for addressing anti-discriminatory attitudes and sharing experiences of lung cancer stigma. We found that users both with and with- out lung cancer engage in discussions pertaining to supportive and welcoming topics, high- lighting the online forum{'}s role in facilitating social and informational support."
}