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Background: instagram  has  become  an  important  source  of  contraceptive  information,particularly  among  younger  age  groups.  Yet,  existing  research  has  relied  on  small,manually  collected  samples  with  a  special  focus  on  the  contraceptive  pill. this  study addresses  this  gap  by  using  automated  data  analysis  and  examining  the  presentation of  both  hormonal  and  non-hormonal  contraceptive  methods,  focusing  on  named barriers  and  benefits  in  the  context  of  these  methods.
Methods: automated  data  collection  via  the  Meta content library aPi was  used  to retrieve  publicly  available  German instagram  posts  about  contraceptive  methods (N=33,596). the two most frequently mentioned contraceptive methods were identified.
the  barriers  and  benefits  were  identified  through  a  literature  review  and  a  keyword-in-context  analysis. afterward,  a  co-occurrence  analysis  was  conducted  to  examine  how often  the  identified  barriers  and  benefits  are  mentioned  together  in  a  post  with  the two  contraceptive  methods.
Results: hormonal  contraceptive  methods,  particularly  the  pill,  were  mentioned  most frequently,  followed  by  natural  contraception,  particularly  the  abbreviation  of  natural family  planning  ‘NFP’. the  analyses  revealed  a  striking  polarisation:  the  pill  was predominantly  framed  in  terms  of  barriers,  while  NFP  was  predominantly  framed  in terms  of  benefits.
Conclusion: contraceptive  information  on  German instagram  is  characterised  by  a one-sided  and  unbalanced  presentation  of  contraceptive  methods. these  findings  carry significant public health implications, highlighting the need for balanced, evidence-based health  communication  on  social  media.

social media;contraceptive information;quantitative text analysis;instagram; public health