Shisha and social media: understanding online perceptions of waterpipe smoking (original) (raw)
Related papers
Portrayal of waterpipe (shisha, hookah, nargile) smoking on Twitter: a qualitative exploration
Public Health, 2016
Objectives: To describe and characterise social media content in relation to waterpipe smoking using qualitative methods. Study Design: Exploratory qualitative design Methods: A representative sample of pre-existing social media content from Twitter relating to waterpipe smoking and written in the English language were collected during a one week period in July 2014. 9,671 tweets were collected; duplicates and retweets were removed leaving 4,439 unique tweets. Data were analysed semiotically (positive, negative, positive and negative, no sentiment, unclassifiable) and thematically. Photographs attached to tweets written by individual users indexed using #hookah (n=299) were subjected to content analysis. Results: Over half of all tweets were positive about waterpipe smoking (59%), with 3% negative, 21% lacking sentiment and 17% unclassifiable. However, there were variations by likely author of tweet, with 91% of tweets from individual users classified as positive. Twitter users focused on their emotional experience, location, other
Hookah-Related Twitter Chatter: A Content Analysis
Preventing Chronic Disease, 2015
Introduction Hookah smoking is becoming increasingly popular among young adults and is often perceived as less harmful than cigarette use. Prior studies show that it is common for youth and young adults to network about substance use behaviors on social media. Social media messages about hookah could influence its use among young people. We explored normalization or discouragement of hookah smoking, and other common messages about hookah on Twitter. Methods From the full stream of tweets posted on Twitter from April 12, 2014, to May 10, 2014 (approximately 14.5 billion tweets), all tweets containing the terms hookah, hooka, shisha, or sheesha were collected (n = 358,523). The hookah tweets from Twitter users (tweeters) with high influence and followers were identified (n = 39,824) and a random sample of 5,000 tweets was taken (13% of tweets with high influence and followers). The sample of tweets was qualitatively coded for normalization (ie, makes hookah smoking seem common and normal or portrays positive experiences with smoking hookah) or discouragement of hookah smoking, and other common themes using crowdsourcing. Results Approximately 87% of the sample of tweets normalized hookah use, and 7% were against hookah or discouraged its use. Nearly half (46%) of tweets that normalized hookah indicated that the tweeter was smoking hookah or wanted to smoke hookah, and 19% were advertisements/promotions for hookah bars or products. Conclusion Educational campaigns about health harms from hookah use and policy changes regarding smoke-free air laws and tobacco advertising on the Internet may be useful to help offset the influence of pro-hookah messages seen on social media.
Tobacco-Related Images on Instagram’s Persian-Language Pages and Audience Attraction Rates
Tobacco and Health
Background: Social media can be powerful tools to influence high-risk behaviors. This study aimed to evaluate tobacco-related images on Instagram’s Persian-language pages and their audience attraction rates. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study included 1870 Instagram posts with cigar, cigarette, e-cigarette, tobacco, vape, and shisha/waterpipe/hookah hashtags. The number of likes and comments for these posts were recorded, and the image type, the attitude of the audience, and the type of caption were noted as well. Results: In general, 500 images (26.7%) had #cigar/cigarette, while 30 (1.6%), 470 (25.1%), 650 (34.8%), 70 (3.7%), and 150 (8%) images had #e-cigarette, #shisha/#waterpipe/#hookah, # tobacco, #juice, and #vape hashtags, respectively. The most common type of image was product images (52.4%). The audience’s attitude towards the images was mostly positive (93.2%). In addition, the most common caption type was sales (76.5%). There was a significant correlation ...
Waterpipe Promotion and Use on Instagram: #Hookah
Nicotine & Tobacco Research, 2017
Introduction: Waterpipe (hookah) use is becoming more prevalent in the United States and abroad with potential implications for public health. As waterpipe use rapidly grows in popularity, novel data streams are needed that can help capture and document the social and environmental context in which individuals use, and are marketed, this emerging tobacco product. This study characterized waterpipe-related posts on Instagram in order to inform regulatory and policy activities in the United States. Methods: Data were collected from Instagram, an image-based social media site. Inclusion criteria for this study comprised an Instagram post with the hashtag "#hookah" that was accompanied by geo-location metadata demonstrating that the post was inside the contiguous United States. Rules were established for coding themes of images (n = 1705). Results: Seven percent of images depicted a single person using a waterpipe and/or blowing smoke, 25% depicted two or more persons lounging and/or using a waterpipe, 6% depicted waterpipes, coals or flavored tobacco without people, 18% of images were promotional material for hookah lounges and restaurant/bars/nightclubs referencing hookah in the text or depicting a waterpipe, 25% were non-waterpipe-related promotional material, 1% were sexually explicit material, and 18% other. 31% of all images depicted or referenced alcohol. 30% of posts provided geo-location from a hookah lounge, 56% from a restaurant/bar/nightclub, and 14% from other types of locations. Conclusions: The cross promotion of waterpipe and alcohol use by hookah lounges, and restaurants/bars/nightclubs suggests that poly-substance use is regularly depicted, and promoted, in nightlife entertainment as well as normalized on Instagram in the United States. Implications: In the US Instagram posts with the hashtag #hookah regularly depicted waterpipe use in conjunction with alcohol use. Instagram's focus on images facilitates picture-based advertising where hookah lounges promote drink specials at the same time nightclubs promote waterpipe specials. Instagram users often document the variety of shapes, sizes, and styles, of waterpipes, suggesting users take pride in their purchases and like to show their customized, and often times elaborate, waterpipes to their followers. Instagram has been underutilized in understanding tobacco related-behaviors and identifying tobacco-related promotional material.
JUUL on Twitter: Analyzing Tweets About Use of a New Nicotine Delivery System
Journal of School Health, 2019
ABSTRACTBACKGROUNDInitial reports suggest that JUUL, a popular e‐cigarette, is being used in schools and other locations in which cigarette smoking is illegal or discouraged. However, there is little scholarly research documenting this. We aimed to make a systematic analysis of JUUL use themes and sentiment on Twitter.METHODSData were collected from Twitter's Filtered Streams Application Programming Interface from April 12, 2018 to May 10, 2018. This yielded 67,934 tweets, from which a random sample of 2% was selected for coding. The final dataset included 1209 tweets. Inter‐rater reliability ranged κ = 0.64–0.85.RESULTSThe majority (71.5%) of tweets expressed positive sentiment toward JUUL. JUUL use in places where cigarette smoking is illegal or discouraged appeared in 111 tweets (9.2%); approximately one‐third of these tweets referring to using the device in school. Nearly 20% of tweets mentioned using the device at home and/or directly in front of responsible adults.CONCLUSI...
Vape proponent behavior on Twitter: A content analysis of vaping related tweets (Preprint)
2019
BACKGROUND As the majority of Twitter content is publicly available, the platform has become a rich data source for public health surveillance, providing insight into emergent phenomena, such as vaping. Although there is a growing body of literature that has examined the content of vaping-related tweets, less is known about the people who generate and disseminate these messages, and the role of e-cigarette advocates in the promotion of these devices. OBJECTIVE To identify key conversation trends and patterns over time, and discern the core voices, message frames and sentiment surrounding e-cigarette discussions on Twitter through a content analysis of tweets posted and retweeted by Australian users. METHODS Data were collected through TrISMA (Tracking Infrastructure for Social Media Analysis), a contemporary technical and organizational infrastructure for the tracking of public communication by Australian users of social media, via a list of 15 popular e-cigarette related terms. RES...
Public Perceptions of Flavored Waterpipe Smoking on Twitter
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Waterpipe tobacco smoking has become increasingly popular in recent years, especially among youth. We aimed to understand longitudinal trends in the prevalence and user perception of waterpipes and their flavors on Twitter. We extracted waterpipe-related tweets from March 2021 to May 2022 using the Twitter Streaming API and classified them into promotional tweets and non-promotional tweets. We examined the longitudinal trends regarding the waterpipe flavors mentioned on Twitter and conducted sentiment analysis on each waterpipe flavor-related non-promotional tweet. Among over 1.3 million waterpipe-related tweets, 1,158,884 tweets were classified as non-promotional and 235,132 were classified as promotional. The most frequently mentioned waterpipe flavor groups were fruit (34%), sweets (17%), and beverages (15%) among all flavor-containing non-promotional tweets (17,746 tweets). The least mentioned flavor groups were tobacco (unflavored, 4%) and spices (2%). Sentiment analysis showed...
Journal of Health Communication, 2018
The current study examined conversations on Twitter related to use and perceptions of e-cigarettes in the United States. We employed the Social Media Analytic and Research Testbed (SMART) dashboard, which was used to identify and download (via a public API) e-cigaretterelated geocoded tweets. E-cigarette-related tweets were collected continuously using customized geo-targeted Twitter APIs. A total of 193,051 tweets were collected between October 2015 and February 2016. Of these tweets, a random sample of 973 geocoded tweets were selected and manually coded for information regarding source, context, and message characteristics. Our findings reveal that although over half of tweets were positive, a sizeable portion was negative or neutral. We also found that, among those tweets mentioning a stigma of e-cigarettes, most confirmed that a stigma does exist. Conversely, among tweets mentioning the harmfulness of e-cigarettes, most denied that e-cigarettes were a health hazard. These results suggest that current efforts have left the public with ambiguity regarding the potential dangers of e-cigarettes. Consequently, it is critical to communicate the public health stance on this issue to inform the public and provide counterarguments to the positive sentiments presently dominating conversations about e-cigarettes on social media. The lack of awareness and need to voice a public health position on e-cigarettes represents a vital opportunity to continue winning gains for tobacco control and prevention efforts through health communication interventions targeting e-cigarettes. Awareness and use of e-cigarettes have been rapidly increasing among both youth and adults in the United States since nationally representative data collection on e-cigarette use began in 2013 (Center for Disease Control [CDC], 2015). However, carcinogens in e-cigarettes may pose a health threat to e-cigarette smokers, and their use may serve as a gateway drug to traditional cigarette use for non-smokers (Leventhal et al., 2015; Morris et al., 2015; Primack, Soneji, Stoolmiller, Fine, & Sargent, 2015). There are also growing concerns that e-cigarettes may re-normalize smoking behavior, and the general public will no longer see smoking as a negative activity (Fairchild, Bayer, & Colgrove, 2014; Stanwick, 2015). Because of increased use and awareness of e-cigarettes, more research is needed to understand beliefs and sentiments surrounding their use. Attitudes and Beliefs about E-Cigarettes on Twitter Several studies have explored the use of social media to capture the public's sentiments, knowledge, and experience about different health topics (Alvaro et al., 2015; Krauss et al., 2015). These studies included capturing sentiments and experience regarding a range of outcomes such as adverse prescription drug reactions (Alvaro et al., 2015), hookah use (Krauss et al., 2015), and obesity (Kent et al., 2015) using data from Twitter, an online social networking and microblogging site with over 317 million active users across the world (Statista, 2016). Consistent trends across studies show a larger portion of tweets expressing positive sentiments toward e-cigarettes (Godea, Caragea, Bulgarov, & Ramisetty-Mikler, 2015; Myslin, Zhu, Chapman, & Conway, 2013) and a strong presence of advertising and promotional tweets (Huang, Kornfield, Sczcypka, & Emery, 2014). These results are in line with data collected through traditional survey approaches (Harrel et al., 2014) and suggest a vast amount of positive tweets and advertising to which the public is exposed with regard to e-cigarettes. 1 Of the content analyses that have been preformed in this area, it is unclear if they coded for respiratory effects and if data from these studies included robot accounts. While a few studies have analyzed Twitter data to report general sentiments (e.g.,
Instagram Posts Related to Backwoods Cigarillo Blunts: Content Analysis
JMIR Public Health and Surveillance, 2021
Background Instagram, one of the most popular social media platforms among youth, offers a unique opportunity to examine blunts—partially or fully hollowed-out large cigars, little cigars, and cigarillos that are filled with marijuana. Cigarillo brands like Backwoods (Imperial Tobacco Group Brands LLC) have product features that facilitate blunt making, including a variety of brand-specific flavors that enhance the smoking experience (eg, honey, dark stout). Backwoods has an active online presence with a user-friendly website. Objective This study examined the extent to which Backwoods cigarillo–related posts on Instagram showed blunt making. Instagram offers a unique opportunity to examine blunt making as Instagram accounts will contain images reflective of behavior occurring without the prime of a researcher. Methods Data consisted of publicly available Instagram posts with the hashtag #backwoods collected from August 30 to September 12, 2018. Inclusion criteria for this study inc...