The Twitter Narrative: An Essential Perspective for Comparative Analyses on Emerging Tobacco Products (Preprint)
Authors: Sharpe Joyce Danielle 
Published: July 2018

BACKGROUND

In a recently published article, Chen and colleagues compared online discussions about electronic cigarettes and hookah use amongst different Internet communities [1]. With great interest, I found the Chen et al. article to provide insightful and novel findings in regards to understanding the variances in tobacco use behaviors amongst the online forums included in the study.

OBJECTIVE

In their limitations, Chen et al. recognized that the use of three websites –Vapor Talk, Hookah Forum, and Reddit – was not extensive nor inclusive of the various online communities that exist for tobacco products. The authors’ rationale for selecting the three websites was to assess similarities and differences between different types of online communities. However, it would have provided an interesting perspective to include Twitter discussions about hookah and electronic cigarette use because Twitter is a diverse online community in itself.

METHODS

Young adults, urban residents, Hispanics, and African Americans are overrepresented populations on Twitter in comparison to the general population [2]. These groups of people are typically overrepresented in vulnerable populations, as well. Therefore, including Twitter data in this comparative study could have captured significant information on tobacco use behaviors of hard-to-reach and underserved populations.

RESULTS

To my knowledge, there has been no previous research that has comparatively analyzed online communities for experiences with emerging tobacco products, such as electronic cigarettes and hookah. Although several studies have conducted content analyses of Twitter discussions about hookah and electronic cigarettes [3-5], there are no studies comparing Twitter to other online communities. Future work should include Twitter in such comparative analyses in order to provide further outlooks on how tobacco use behaviors of Twitter subscribers are identical and different from users of other online forums, which can then inform and tailor health education interventions based on the particular online community.

CONCLUSIONS

References
1. Chen, AT, Zhu, SH, Conway, M. What online communities can tell us about electronic cigarettes and hookah use: A study using text mining and visualization techniques. J Med Internet Res 2015;17(9):e220. PMID:26420469.

2. Mislove, A, Lehmann, S, Ahn, Y, Onnela, J, Rosenquist, JN. Understanding the demographics of Twitter users. Proceedings of the Fifth International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media; 2011 July 17-21; Barcelona, Spain. 2011.

3. Myslín M, Zhu S, Chapman W, Conway M. Using Twitter to examine smoking behavior and perceptions of emerging tobacco products. J Med Internet Res 2013;15(8):e174. doi:10.2196/jmir.2534.

4. Krauss, MJ, et al. (2015). Hookah-related Twitter chatter: A content analysis. Prev Chronic Dis 2015;12:e121. PMID:26226068.

5. Cole-Lewis, H, et al. (2015). Social listening: A content analysis of e-cigarette discussions on Twitter. J Med Internet Res 2015;17(10):e243. PMID:26508089.