A Qualitative Content Analysis: #PalliativeCare on TikTok

Palliative care is a health service to patients and caregivers to improve quality of life when facing a terminal illness. In this work‐in‐progress paper, we analyzed secondary data, namely 46 TikToks thematizing palliative care, to gain initial insights into the creators and types of content in recent years. We developed a codebook based on inductive and deductive methods to conduct content analysis. Twenty‐four TikToks were posted by healthcare professionals, while thirteen were created by patients. Six TikToks were created by caregivers and three TikToks were posted by news agencies. While content of TikToks varied, around 70% of 46 TikToks were categorized as Personal Experience shared by healthcare professionals, patients and caregivers. Additionally, our goal was to explore research potential concerning affective information behavior and the development of para‐social and/or cyber social interactions and relationships triggered by highly vulnerable and/or emotionally charged content. Therefore, we manually collected and analyzed 20 user comments for each of the five TikToks selected out of the 46 TikToks. These TikTok users provided emotional support by expressing sympathy and offering prayers; they also asked questions.