Abstract
Introduction: College-aged youth are active on social media yet smoking-related social media engagement in these populations has not been thoroughly investigated. We sought to conduct an exploratory infoveillance study focused on geolocated data to characterize smoking-related tweets originating from California 4-year colleges on Twitter.Methods: Tweets from 2015 to 2019 with geospatial coordinates in CA college campuses containing smoking-related keywords were collected from the Twitter API stream and manually annotated for discussions about smoking product type, sentiment, and behavior.Results: Out of all tweets detected with smoking-related behavior, 46.7% related to tobacco use, 50.0% to marijuana, and 7.3% to vaping. Of these tweets, 46.1% reported first-person use or second-hand observation of smoking behavior. Out of 962 tweets with user sentiment, the majority (67.6%) were positive, ranging from 55.0% for California State University, Long Beach to 95.8% for California State University, Los Angeles.Discussion: We detected reporting of first- and second-hand smoking behavior on CA college campuses representing possible violation of campus smoking bans. The majority of tweets expressed positive sentiment about smoking behaviors, though there was appreciable variability between college campuses. This suggests that anti-smoking outreach should be tailored to the unique student populations of these college communities.Conclusion: Among tweets about smoking from California colleges, high levels of positive sentiment suggest that the campus climate may be less receptive to anti-smoking messages or adherence to campus smoking bans. Further research should investigate the degree to which this varies by campuses over time and following implementation of bans including validating using other sources of data.
Highlights
College-aged youth are active on social media yet smoking-related social media engagement in these populations has not been thoroughly investigated
The objective of the study’s data collection approach was to obtain a highly refined subset of tweets, which were both posted from college campus’ geolocated coordinates in California and included user discussions about smoking, in preparation for manual review to more purposefully identify tweets that discussed different types of tobacco and smoking products, sentiment of users toward smoking behavior, and selfreported smoking behavior on campus
There exists the potential for sampling bias associated with different Twitter Application Programming Interface (API) that are not representative of all Twitter data (e.g., Firehose data), and data filtered only for geocoded data may omit many conversations from collegeaged populations about topics, such as smoking, which may be linked to college-related user groups [50]
Summary
College-aged youth are active on social media yet smoking-related social media engagement in these populations has not been thoroughly investigated. We sought to conduct an exploratory infoveillance study focused on geolocated data to characterize smoking-related tweets originating from California 4-year colleges on Twitter. College-going individuals in the United States may have unique attitudes toward substance use behavior and tobacco use, including shifts in attitudes and behaviors that are associated with the constantly changing product landscape of alternative tobacco products (ATPs), such as electronic-cigarettes [1, 2]. Data from social media platforms are often used to self-report and publicly communicate health-related attitudes and behaviors [6]. Young adults [ages 18–25 [7]] in the United States are much more likely than older populations to actively use social media, including popular platforms Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram [8]. Infoveillance research, which uses online information sources to detect trends about the distribution and determinants of disease, including health knowledge and behaviors, has been used to develop insights on numerous public health issues including infectious diseases, vaccination sentiment, opioid use disorder, mental health issues, and, relevant to the exploratory aims of this study, tobacco and alternative tobacco use attitudes and behavior [9,10,11]
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