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A cross-sectional examination of marketing of electronic cigarettes on Twitter

BACKGROUND: Rapid increases in marketing of e-cigarettes coincide with growth in e-cigarette use in recent years; however, little is known about how e-cigarettes are marketed on social media platforms. METHODS: Keywords were used to collect tweets related to e-cigarettes from the Twitter Firehose be...

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Autores principales: Huang, Jidong, Kornfield, Rachel, Szczypka, Glen, Emery, Sherry L
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BMJ Publishing Group 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4078681/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24935894
http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2014-051551
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author Huang, Jidong
Kornfield, Rachel
Szczypka, Glen
Emery, Sherry L
author_facet Huang, Jidong
Kornfield, Rachel
Szczypka, Glen
Emery, Sherry L
author_sort Huang, Jidong
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Rapid increases in marketing of e-cigarettes coincide with growth in e-cigarette use in recent years; however, little is known about how e-cigarettes are marketed on social media platforms. METHODS: Keywords were used to collect tweets related to e-cigarettes from the Twitter Firehose between 1 May 2012 and 30 June 2012. Tweets were coded for smoking cessation mentions, as well as health and safety mentions, and were classified as commercial or non-commercial (‘organic’) tweets using a combination of Naïve Bayes machine learning methods, keyword algorithms and human coding. Metadata associated with each tweet were used to examine the characteristics of accounts tweeting about e-cigarettes. RESULTS: 73 672 tweets related to e-cigarettes were captured in the study period, 90% of which were classified as commercial tweets. Accounts tweeting commercial e-cigarette content were associated with lower Klout scores, a measure of influence. Commercial tweeting was largely driven by a small group of highly active accounts, and 94% of commercial tweets included links to websites, many of which sell or promote e-cigarettes. Approximately 10% of commercial and organic tweets mentioned smoking cessation, and 34% of commercial tweets included mentions of prices or discounts for e-cigarettes. CONCLUSIONS: Twitter appears to be an important marketing platform for e-cigarettes. Tweets related to e-cigarettes were overwhelmingly commercial, and a substantial proportion mentioned smoking cessation. E-cigarette marketing on Twitter may have public health implications. Continued surveillance of e-cigarette marketing on social media platforms is needed.
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spelling pubmed-40786812014-07-10 A cross-sectional examination of marketing of electronic cigarettes on Twitter Huang, Jidong Kornfield, Rachel Szczypka, Glen Emery, Sherry L Tob Control Original Article BACKGROUND: Rapid increases in marketing of e-cigarettes coincide with growth in e-cigarette use in recent years; however, little is known about how e-cigarettes are marketed on social media platforms. METHODS: Keywords were used to collect tweets related to e-cigarettes from the Twitter Firehose between 1 May 2012 and 30 June 2012. Tweets were coded for smoking cessation mentions, as well as health and safety mentions, and were classified as commercial or non-commercial (‘organic’) tweets using a combination of Naïve Bayes machine learning methods, keyword algorithms and human coding. Metadata associated with each tweet were used to examine the characteristics of accounts tweeting about e-cigarettes. RESULTS: 73 672 tweets related to e-cigarettes were captured in the study period, 90% of which were classified as commercial tweets. Accounts tweeting commercial e-cigarette content were associated with lower Klout scores, a measure of influence. Commercial tweeting was largely driven by a small group of highly active accounts, and 94% of commercial tweets included links to websites, many of which sell or promote e-cigarettes. Approximately 10% of commercial and organic tweets mentioned smoking cessation, and 34% of commercial tweets included mentions of prices or discounts for e-cigarettes. CONCLUSIONS: Twitter appears to be an important marketing platform for e-cigarettes. Tweets related to e-cigarettes were overwhelmingly commercial, and a substantial proportion mentioned smoking cessation. E-cigarette marketing on Twitter may have public health implications. Continued surveillance of e-cigarette marketing on social media platforms is needed. BMJ Publishing Group 2014-07 /pmc/articles/PMC4078681/ /pubmed/24935894 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2014-051551 Text en Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://group.bmj.com/group/rights-licensing/permissions This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 3.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
spellingShingle Original Article
Huang, Jidong
Kornfield, Rachel
Szczypka, Glen
Emery, Sherry L
A cross-sectional examination of marketing of electronic cigarettes on Twitter
title A cross-sectional examination of marketing of electronic cigarettes on Twitter
title_full A cross-sectional examination of marketing of electronic cigarettes on Twitter
title_fullStr A cross-sectional examination of marketing of electronic cigarettes on Twitter
title_full_unstemmed A cross-sectional examination of marketing of electronic cigarettes on Twitter
title_short A cross-sectional examination of marketing of electronic cigarettes on Twitter
title_sort cross-sectional examination of marketing of electronic cigarettes on twitter
topic Original Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4078681/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24935894
http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2014-051551
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