Grants and Contracts Details
Description
Electronic cigarettes (or e-cigs) are currently a popular emerging tobacco product.
Because e-cigs do not generate toxic tobacco combustion products produced when
smoking regular cigarettes, they are perceived and sometimes promoted as a less
harmful alternative to smoking and also as a means to quit smoking. Although they may
be less harmful, the efficacy of using e-cigs for smoking cessation has not been
demonstrated. Furthermore, owing to their recent introduction, there are also safety
concerns. The US Federal Drug Administration (FDA) has introduced regulations that
went into effect on 8/8/2016 requiring approval from FDA for e-cig products, banning
sales to minors and free samples, and requiring warning labels on certain products. In
this context, surveillance of evolving themes and factors contributing to message
popularity for e-cigarette chatter on social media platforms is an important task. Twitter
has become the favorite network for teens and young adults owing to the short
message size and associated ease of use on smart phones. For an emerging product
like e-cigs, the asymmetric follower-friend connections and “hashtag” functionality in
Twitter are a convenient way to propagate information and facilitate discussion. Among
online forums, Reddit allows for longer messages from users inviting specific feedback
from other users. In this project, we propose to computationally analyze the contents
and user profiles available in the dataset of all e-cig tweets and subreddit messages
generated during the 12 month period 7/16 to 6/17. Our first aim is to provide an
exhaustive high accuracy overview of distribution of themes in the landscape of e-cig
usage, marketing, and regulation as observed on Twitter and Reddit using topic
modeling methods. Next, we will identify factors that contribute to popularity of certain ecig
messages over others so agencies can employ appropriate strategies to maximize
diffusion of their messages. Finally, we will conduct these analyses across the
dimensions of gender, age, and ace to grasp variations that are specific to understudied
demographic segments.
Status | Finished |
---|---|
Effective start/end date | 8/10/17 → 7/31/21 |
Funding
- National Cancer Institute: $366,053.00
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