Dataset Information

Prevalence and Characteristics of Twitter Posts About Court-Ordered, Tobacco-Related Corrective Statements: Descriptive Content Analysis.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND:Three major US tobacco companies were recently ordered to publish corrective statements intended to prevent and restrain further fraud about the health effects of smoking. The court-ordered statements began appearing in newspapers and on television (TV) in late 2017. OBJECTIVE:The objective of this study was to examine the social media dissemination of the tobacco corrective statements during the first 6 months of the implementation of the statements. METHODS:We conducted a descriptive content analysis of Twitter posts using an iterative search strategy through Crimson Hexagon and randomly selected 19.74% (456/2309) of original posts occurring between November 1, 2017, and March 27, 2018, for coding and analysis. We assessed post volume over time, source or author, valence, linked content, and reference to the industry (eg, big tobacco, tobacco industry, and Philip Morris) and media outlet (TV or newspaper). Retweeted content was coded for source/author and prevalence. RESULTS:Most posts were published in November 2017, surrounding the initial release of the corrective statements. Content was generally neutral (58.7%, 268/456) or positive (33.3%, 152/456) in valence, included links to additional information about the statements (94.9%, 433/456), referred to the industry (87.7%, 400/456), and did not mention a specific media channel on which the statements were aired or published (15%). The majority of original posts were created by individual users (55.2%, 252/456), whereas the majority of retweeted posts were posted by public health organizations (51%). Differences by source are reported, for example, organization posts are more likely to include a link to additional information compared with individual users (P=.03). CONCLUSIONS:Conversations about the court-ordered corrective statements are taking place on Twitter and are generally neutral or positive in nature. Public health organizations may be increasing the prevalence of these conversations through social media engagement.

SUBMITTER: Kelley DE

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6806118 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Prevalence and Characteristics of Twitter Posts About Court-Ordered, Tobacco-Related Corrective Statements: Descriptive Content Analysis.

Kelley Dannielle E DE Brown Meredith M Murray Alice A Blake Kelly D KD

JMIR public health and surveillance 20191008 4

<h4>Background</h4>Three major US tobacco companies were recently ordered to publish corrective statements intended to prevent and restrain further fraud about the health effects of smoking. The court-ordered statements began appearing in newspapers and on television (TV) in late 2017.<h4>Objective</h4>The objective of this study was to examine the social media dissemination of the tobacco corrective statements during the first 6 months of the implementation of the statements.<h4>Methods</h4>We ...[more]

PMID: 31596243

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Project description:BackgroundHealth professions students use social media to communicate with other students and health professionals, discuss career plans or coursework, and share the results of research projects or new information. These platforms allow students to share thoughts and perceptions that are not disclosed in formal education settings. Twitter provides an excellent window through which health professions educators can observe students' sociocultural and learning needs. However, despite its merits, cyberincivility on Twitter among health professions students has been reported. Cyber means using electronic technologies, and incivility is a general term for bad manners. As such, cyberincivility refers to any act of disrespectful, insensitive, or disruptive behavior in an electronic environment.ObjectiveThis study aims to describe the characteristics and instances of cyberincivility posted on Twitter by self-identified health professions students. A further objective of the study is to analyze the prevalence of tweets perceived as inappropriate or potentially objectionable while describing patterns and differences in the instances of cyberincivility posted by those users.MethodsWe used a cross-sectional descriptive Twitter data mining method to collect quantitative and qualitative data from August 2019 to February 2020. The sample was taken from users who self-identified as health professions students (eg, medicine, nursing, dental, pharmacy, physician assistant, and physical therapy) in their user description. Data management and analysis were performed with a combination of SAS 9.4 for descriptive and inferential statistics, including logistic regression, and NVivo 12 for descriptive patterns of textual data.ResultsWe analyzed 20 of the most recent tweets for each account (N=12,820). A total of 639 user accounts were analyzed for quantitative analysis, including 280 (43.8%) medicine students and 329 (51.5%) nursing students in 22 countries: the United States (287/639, 44.9%), the United Kingdom (197/639, 30.8%), unknown countries (104/639, 16.3%), and 19 other countries (51/639, 8.0%). Of the 639 accounts, 193 (30.2%) were coded as having instances of cyberincivility. Of these, 61.7% (119/193), 32.6% (63/193), and 5.7% (11/193) belonged to students in nursing, medicine, and other disciplines, respectively. Among 502 instances of cyberincivility identified from 641 qualitative analysis samples, the largest categories were profanity and product promotion. Several aggressive or biased comments toward other users, politicians, or certain groups of people were also found.ConclusionsCyberincivility is a multifaceted phenomenon that must be considered in its complexity if health professions students are to embrace a culture of mutual respect and collaboration. Students' perceptions and reports of their Twitter experiences offer insights into behavior on the web and the evolving role of cyberspace, and potentially problematic posts provide opportunities for teaching digital professionalism. Our study indicates that there is a continued need to provide students with guidance and training regarding the importance of maintaining a professional persona on the web.

Project description:BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic has drawn attention to various inequalities in global societies, highlighting discrepancies in terms of safety, accessibility, and overall health. In particular, sex workers are disproportionately at risk due to the nature of their work and the social stigma that comes alongside it.ObjectiveThis study examines how public social media can be used as a tool of professional and personal expression by sex workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. We aimed to explore an underresearched topic by focusing on sex workers' experiences with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic on the social media platform Twitter. In particular, we aimed to find the main issues that sex workers discuss on social media in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic.MethodsA literature review followed by a qualitative analysis of 1458 (re)tweets from 22 sex worker Twitter accounts was used for this study. The tweets were qualitatively coded by theme through the use of intercoder reliability. Empirical, experimental, and observational studies were included in this review to provide context and support for our findings.ResultsIn total, 5 major categories were identified as a result of the content analysis used for this study: concerns (n=542, 37.2%), solicitation (n=336, 23.0%), herd mentality (n=231, 15.8%), humor (n=190, 13.0%), and blame (n=146, 10.0%). The concerns category was the most prominent category, which could be due to its multifaceted nature of including individual concerns, health issues, concerns for essential workers and businesses, as well as concerns about inequalities or intersectionality. When using gender as a control factor, the majority of the results were not noteworthy, save for the blame category, in which sexual and gender minorities (SGMs) were more likely to post content.ConclusionsThough there has been an increase in the literature related to the experiences of sex workers, this paper recommends that future studies could benefit from further examining these 5 major categories through mixed methods research. Examining this phenomenon could recognize the challenges unique to this working community during the COVID-19 pandemic and potentially reduce the widespread stigma associated with sex work in general.

Project description:BACKGROUND:Although gun violence has been identified as a major public health concern, the scope and significance of internet gun advertising is not known. OBJECTIVE:This study aimed to quantify the characteristics of gun advertising on social media and to compare the reach of posts by manufacturers with those of influencers. METHODS:Using a systematic search, we created a database of recent and popular Twitter and YouTube posts made public by major firearm manufacturers and influencers. From our sample of social media posts, we reviewed the content of the posts on the basis of 19 different characteristics, such as type of gun, presence of women, and military or police references. Our content analysis summarized statistical differences in the information conveyed in posts to compare advertising approaches across social media platforms. RESULTS:Sample posts revealed that firearm manufacturers use social media to attract audiences to websites that sell firearms: 14.1% (131/928; ±2.9) of Twitter posts, 53.6% (228/425; ±6.2) of YouTube videos, and 89.5% (214/239; ±5.1) of YouTube influencer videos link to websites that facilitate sales. Advertisements included women in efforts to market handguns and pistols for the purpose of protection: videos with women included protection themes 2.5 times more often than videos without women. Top manufacturers of domestic firearms received 98 million channel views, compared with 6.1 billion channel views received by the top 12 YouTube influencers. CONCLUSIONS:Firearm companies use social media as an advertising platform to connect viewers to websites that sell guns. Gun manufacturers appropriate YouTube servers, video streaming services, and the work of YouTube influencers to reach large audiences to promote the widespread sale of consumer firearms. YouTube and Twitter subsidize gun advertising by offering server and streaming services at no cost to gun manufacturers, to the commercial benefit of Google and Twitter's corporate ownership.

Project description:Importance:In 2006, a US district court judge ordered tobacco companies to sponsor nationwide antismoking advertising campaigns. This landmark ruling and its subsequent execution represent an unprecedented tobacco control event; however, the association of this campaign with intentions and/or attempts to quit smoking is unknown. Objectives:To assess the reach of the expanded court-ordered tobacco industry antismoking advertisements (via television, newspapers, tobacco company websites, and/or cigarette packages), to examine associations between exposure to industry antismoking advertisements and intentions and/or attempts to quit smoking among cigarette smokers, and to calculate the numbers of US smokers who would have quit intentions associated with exposure to multiple advertisements. Design, Setting, and Participants:Data for this study were obtained from 5309 US adults, including 610 smokers, who responded to the Health Information National Trends Survey, a nationally representative cross-sectional survey conducted from January 22 to April 30, 2019. Respondents were representatives of households selected by equal-probability sampling of a database of US residential addresses. Exposure:Reported exposure to antismoking messages. Main Outcomes and Measures:Cigarette smoking cessation attempt in the past 12 months and intentions to quit cigarette smoking in the next 6 months. Covariates were age, sex, household annual income, race/ethnicity, educational level, and geographical residence. Data were weighted to be nationally representative after applying survey weights specified for the survey cycle. Results:The overall sample of 5309 respondents were a mean (SD) age of 55.6 (19.1) years and included 3073 women (51.2%), 3037 non-Hispanic white respondents (59.1%), 4645 respondents who lived in urban US areas (84.7%), and 610 current smokers (12.5%). Findings indicate that 2464 US adults (45.8%; 95% CI, 43.2%-48.5%) and 410 current smokers (66.8%; 95% CI, 61.1%-72.4%) were exposed to antismoking advertisements. Exposure to multiple antismoking messages was associated with 2.19 (95% CI, 1.10-4.34) greater odds of having intentions to quit cigarette smoking but was not associated with attempts to quit (adjusted odds ratio, 1.31; 95% CI, 0.69-2.52). Furthermore, an examination of the association of cumulative exposure to antismoking messages with cessation intentions revealed that, with each additional exposure to an antismoking message, the odds of smoking cessation intentions increased by 1.21 (95% CI, 1.02-1.44). If all smokers were to be exposed to multiple antitobacco messages, there could be an estimated 3.98 million (95% CI, 492?480-7?223?040) current smokers in the United States with intentions to quit. Conclusions and Relevance:Although the reach of court-ordered industry advertisements increased among smokers, the reach of these advertisements within the general population remains suboptimal. The finding that industry advertisements helped smokers consider quitting highlights their potential to aid smoking cessation. However, the lack of association with actual attempts to quit suggests that the industry antismoking advertisement campaigns were inadequate. The design and content of industry antismoking advertisement campaigns should be enhanced to help smokers quit.

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Project description:BackgroundDiabetes mellitus is a major global public health issue where self-management is critical to reducing disease burden. Social media has been a powerful tool to understand public perceptions. Public perception of the drugs used for the treatment of diabetes may be useful for orienting interventions to increase adherence.ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to explore the public perceptions of anti-diabetic drugs through the analysis of health-related tweets mentioning such medications.MethodsThis study uses an infoveillance social listening approach to monitor public discourse using Twitter data. We coded 4000 tweets from January 1, 2019 to October 1, 2019 containing key terms related to anti-diabetic drugs by using qualitative content analysis. Tweets were coded for whether they were truly about an anti-diabetic drug and whether they were health-related. Health-related tweets were further coded based on who was tweeting, which anti-diabetic drug was being tweeted about, and the content discussed in the tweet. The main outcome of the analysis was the themes identified by analyzing the content of health-related tweets on anti-diabetic drugs.ResultsWe identified 1664 health-related tweets on 33 anti-diabetic drugs. A quarter (415/1664) of the tweets were confirmed to have been from people with diabetes, 17.9% (298/1664) from people posting about someone else, and 2.7% (45/1664) from health care professionals. However, the role of the tweeter was unidentifiable in two-thirds of the tweets. We identified 13 themes, with the health consequences of the cost of anti-diabetic drugs being the most extensively discussed, followed by the efficacy and availability. We also identified issues that patients may conceal from health care professionals, such as purchasing medications from unofficial sources.ConclusionsThis study uses an infoveillance approach using Twitter data to explore public perceptions related to anti-diabetic drugs. This analysis gives an insight into the real-life issues that an individual faces when taking anti-diabetic drugs, and such findings may be incorporated into health policies to improve compliance and efficacy. This study suggests that there is a fear of not having access to anti-diabetic drugs due to cost or physical availability and highlights the impact of the sacrifices made to access anti-diabetic drugs. Along with screening for diabetes-related health issues, health care professionals should also ask their patients about any non-health-related concerns regarding their anti-diabetic drugs. The positive tweets about dietary changes indicate that people with type 2 diabetes may be more open to self-management than what the health care professionals believe.

Dataset Information

Prevalence and Characteristics of Twitter Posts About Court-Ordered, Tobacco-Related Corrective Statements: Descriptive Content Analysis.

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Prevalence and Characteristics of Twitter Posts About Court-Ordered, Tobacco-Related Corrective Statements: Descriptive Content Analysis.

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