The influence of social media affordances on drug dealer posting behavior across multiple social networking sites (SNS)

Abstract

Social media has been documented as widely used for initiating online sales of illicit drugs such as opioids. However, not much is known about how affordances of social networking sites (SNS) influence how dealers advertise their supplies. To explore this topic, social media posts across 5 online platforms (Google Groups, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, and Tumblr) were collected during 2020–2021. Biterm topic modeling (BTM) was used to identify signal posts specifically associated with the illegal online sale of opioids from drug selling social media accounts. Posts were analyzed by conducting a word count for drug names or slang terms associated with 5 categories: Opioids, Non-Opioid Prescription Controlled Drugs (e.g., Xanax, Valium), Other Illicit Drugs (e.g., Meth, Cocaine), Synthetic Opioids (Fentanyl), and Synthetic Marijuana. Number of mentions per post were calculated for each drug category and compared across platforms. Identifiers (e.g., publicly available email address) associated with posts were used to track dealers across different user accounts. Platforms with affordances for longer messages (e.g., Tumblr) had higher concentrations of drug mentions per post and higher variety of drug type mentions compared to SNS platforms Instagram and Twitter. Google Groups had the most drug mentions per post across all 5 categories. Additionally, each identifier was associated with multiple user accounts on a given platform. These results indicate that affordances of anonymity and message length may influence how drug dealers advertise their services on different platforms. Public health implications and strategies to counteract drug dealers and illicit drug diversion via SNS are also discussed.