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Characteristics of Gun Advertisements on Social Media: Systematic Search and Content Analysis of Twitter and YouTube Posts

BACKGROUND: Although gun violence has been identified as a major public health concern, the scope and significance of internet gun advertising is not known. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to quantify the characteristics of gun advertising on social media and to compare the reach of posts by manufacture...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Jordan, Lisa, Kalin, James, Dabrowski, Colleen
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: JMIR Publications 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7148552/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32217496
http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/15736
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author Jordan, Lisa
Kalin, James
Dabrowski, Colleen
author_facet Jordan, Lisa
Kalin, James
Dabrowski, Colleen
author_sort Jordan, Lisa
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Although gun violence has been identified as a major public health concern, the scope and significance of internet gun advertising is not known. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to quantify the characteristics of gun advertising on social media and to compare the reach of posts by manufacturers with those of influencers. METHODS: Using a systematic search, we created a database of recent and popular Twitter and YouTube posts made public by major firearm manufacturers and influencers. From our sample of social media posts, we reviewed the content of the posts on the basis of 19 different characteristics, such as type of gun, presence of women, and military or police references. Our content analysis summarized statistical differences in the information conveyed in posts to compare advertising approaches across social media platforms. RESULTS: Sample posts revealed that firearm manufacturers use social media to attract audiences to websites that sell firearms: 14.1% (131/928; ±2.9) of Twitter posts, 53.6% (228/425; ±6.2) of YouTube videos, and 89.5% (214/239; ±5.1) of YouTube influencer videos link to websites that facilitate sales. Advertisements included women in efforts to market handguns and pistols for the purpose of protection: videos with women included protection themes 2.5 times more often than videos without women. Top manufacturers of domestic firearms received 98 million channel views, compared with 6.1 billion channel views received by the top 12 YouTube influencers. CONCLUSIONS: Firearm companies use social media as an advertising platform to connect viewers to websites that sell guns. Gun manufacturers appropriate YouTube servers, video streaming services, and the work of YouTube influencers to reach large audiences to promote the widespread sale of consumer firearms. YouTube and Twitter subsidize gun advertising by offering server and streaming services at no cost to gun manufacturers, to the commercial benefit of Google and Twitter’s corporate ownership.
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spelling pubmed-71485522020-04-21 Characteristics of Gun Advertisements on Social Media: Systematic Search and Content Analysis of Twitter and YouTube Posts Jordan, Lisa Kalin, James Dabrowski, Colleen J Med Internet Res Original Paper BACKGROUND: Although gun violence has been identified as a major public health concern, the scope and significance of internet gun advertising is not known. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to quantify the characteristics of gun advertising on social media and to compare the reach of posts by manufacturers with those of influencers. METHODS: Using a systematic search, we created a database of recent and popular Twitter and YouTube posts made public by major firearm manufacturers and influencers. From our sample of social media posts, we reviewed the content of the posts on the basis of 19 different characteristics, such as type of gun, presence of women, and military or police references. Our content analysis summarized statistical differences in the information conveyed in posts to compare advertising approaches across social media platforms. RESULTS: Sample posts revealed that firearm manufacturers use social media to attract audiences to websites that sell firearms: 14.1% (131/928; ±2.9) of Twitter posts, 53.6% (228/425; ±6.2) of YouTube videos, and 89.5% (214/239; ±5.1) of YouTube influencer videos link to websites that facilitate sales. Advertisements included women in efforts to market handguns and pistols for the purpose of protection: videos with women included protection themes 2.5 times more often than videos without women. Top manufacturers of domestic firearms received 98 million channel views, compared with 6.1 billion channel views received by the top 12 YouTube influencers. CONCLUSIONS: Firearm companies use social media as an advertising platform to connect viewers to websites that sell guns. Gun manufacturers appropriate YouTube servers, video streaming services, and the work of YouTube influencers to reach large audiences to promote the widespread sale of consumer firearms. YouTube and Twitter subsidize gun advertising by offering server and streaming services at no cost to gun manufacturers, to the commercial benefit of Google and Twitter’s corporate ownership. JMIR Publications 2020-03-27 /pmc/articles/PMC7148552/ /pubmed/32217496 http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/15736 Text en ©Lisa Jordan, James Kalin, Colleen Dabrowski. Originally published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (http://www.jmir.org), 27.03.2020. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on http://www.jmir.org/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.
spellingShingle Original Paper
Jordan, Lisa
Kalin, James
Dabrowski, Colleen
Characteristics of Gun Advertisements on Social Media: Systematic Search and Content Analysis of Twitter and YouTube Posts
title Characteristics of Gun Advertisements on Social Media: Systematic Search and Content Analysis of Twitter and YouTube Posts
title_full Characteristics of Gun Advertisements on Social Media: Systematic Search and Content Analysis of Twitter and YouTube Posts
title_fullStr Characteristics of Gun Advertisements on Social Media: Systematic Search and Content Analysis of Twitter and YouTube Posts
title_full_unstemmed Characteristics of Gun Advertisements on Social Media: Systematic Search and Content Analysis of Twitter and YouTube Posts
title_short Characteristics of Gun Advertisements on Social Media: Systematic Search and Content Analysis of Twitter and YouTube Posts
title_sort characteristics of gun advertisements on social media: systematic search and content analysis of twitter and youtube posts
topic Original Paper
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7148552/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32217496
http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/15736
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