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Where Do People Vape? Insights from Twitter Data.

ABSTRACT: Background: Emerging evidence suggests that exposure to secondhand and thirdhand aerosol from electronic cigarettes may have serious health risks including respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. Social media data can help identify common locations referenced in vaping-related discussions and offer clues about where individuals vape. These insights can strengthen current tobacco regulations and prioritize new policies to improve public health. This study identified commonly referenced locations in vaping-related discussions on Twitter in 2018. Methods: Vaping-related posts to Twitter were obtained from 1 January 2018 to 31 December 2018. Rule-based classifiers categorized each Twitter post into 11 location-related categories (social venues, living spaces, stores, modes of transportation, schools, workplaces, healthcare offices, eateries, correctional facilities, religious institutions, and miscellaneous) using a data dictionary of location-related keywords (n = 290,816). Results: The most prevalent category was social venues (17.9%), followed by living spaces (16.7%), stores (15.9%), modes of transportation (15.5%), schools (14.9%), and workplaces (11.9%). Other categories pertained to: healthcare offices (2.0%), eateries (1.2%), correctional facilities (0.7%), and religious institutions (0.4%). Conclusion: This study suggests that locations related to socialization venues may be priority areas for future surveillance and enforcement of smoke-free air policies. Similarly, development and enforcement of similar policies at workplaces, schools and multi-unit housing may curb exposure to secondhand and thirdhand aerosol among the public.

SUBMITTER: Majmundar A

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6747114 | biostudies-other | 2019 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other

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Where Do People Vape? Insights from Twitter Data.

Majmundar Anuja A Allem Jon-Patrick JP Cruz Tess Boley TB Unger Jennifer B JB

International journal of environmental research and public health 20190823 17

<i>Background</i>: Emerging evidence suggests that exposure to secondhand and thirdhand aerosol from electronic cigarettes may have serious health risks including respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. Social media data can help identify common locations referenced in vaping-related discussions and offer clues about where individuals vape. These insights can strengthen current tobacco regulations and prioritize new policies to improve public health. This study identified commonly referenced lo ...[more]

PMID: 31443591

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Project description:BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic led to unprecedented mitigation efforts that disrupted the daily lives of millions. Beyond the general health repercussions of the pandemic itself, these measures also present a challenge to the world's mental health and health care systems. Considering that traditional survey methods are time-consuming and expensive, we need timely and proactive data sources to respond to the rapidly evolving effects of health policy on our population's mental health. Many people in the United States now use social media platforms such as Twitter to express the most minute details of their daily lives and social relations. This behavior is expected to increase during the COVID-19 pandemic, rendering social media data a rich field to understand personal well-being.ObjectiveThis study aims to answer three research questions: (1) What themes emerge from a corpus of US tweets about COVID-19? (2) To what extent did social media use increase during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic? and (3) Does sentiment change in response to the COVID-19 pandemic?MethodsWe analyzed 86,581,237 public domain English language US tweets collected from an open-access public repository in three steps. First, we characterized the evolution of hashtags over time using latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) topic modeling. Second, we increased the granularity of this analysis by downloading Twitter timelines of a large cohort of individuals (n=354,738) in 20 major US cities to assess changes in social media use. Finally, using this timeline data, we examined collective shifts in public mood in relation to evolving pandemic news cycles by analyzing the average daily sentiment of all timeline tweets with the Valence Aware Dictionary and Sentiment Reasoner (VADER) tool.ResultsLDA topics generated in the early months of the data set corresponded to major COVID-19-specific events. However, as state and municipal governments began issuing stay-at-home orders, latent themes shifted toward US-related lifestyle changes rather than global pandemic-related events. Social media volume also increased significantly, peaking during stay-at-home mandates. Finally, VADER sentiment analysis scores of user timelines were initially high and stable but decreased significantly, and continuously, by late March.ConclusionsOur findings underscore the negative effects of the pandemic on overall population sentiment. Increased use rates suggest that, for some, social media may be a coping mechanism to combat feelings of isolation related to long-term social distancing. However, in light of the documented negative effect of heavy social media use on mental health, social media may further exacerbate negative feelings in the long-term for many individuals. Thus, considering the overburdened US mental health care structure, these findings have important implications for ongoing mitigation efforts.

Project description:BACKGROUND:Use of the social media website Twitter is highly prevalent and has led to a plethora of Web-based social and health-related data available for use by researchers. As such, researchers are increasingly using data from social media to retrieve and analyze mental health-related content. However, there is limited evidence regarding why people use this emerging platform to discuss mental health problems in the first place. OBJECTIVES:The aim of this study was to explore the reasons why individuals discuss mental health on the social media website Twitter. The study was the first of its kind to implement a study-specific hashtag for research; therefore, we also examined how feasible it was to circulate and analyze a study-specific hashtag for mental health research. METHODS:Text mining methods using the Twitter Streaming Application Programming Interface (API) and Twitter Search API were used to collect and organize tweets from the hashtag #WhyWeTweetMH, circulated between September 2015 and November 2015. Tweets were analyzed thematically to understand the key reasons for discussing mental health using the Twitter platform. RESULTS:Four overarching themes were derived from the 132 tweets collected: (1) sense of community; (2) raising awareness and combatting stigma; (3) safe space for expression; and (4) coping and empowerment. In addition, 11 associated subthemes were also identified. CONCLUSIONS:The themes derived from the content of the tweets highlight the perceived therapeutic benefits of Twitter through the provision of support and information and the potential for self-management strategies. The ability to use Twitter to combat stigma and raise awareness of mental health problems indicates the societal benefits that can be facilitated via the platform. The number of tweets and themes identified demonstrates the feasibility of implementing study-specific hashtags to explore research questions in the field of mental health and can be used as a basis for other health-related research.

Project description:BackgroundSocial media technology such as Twitter allows users to share their thoughts, feelings, and opinions online. The growing body of social media data is becoming a central part of infodemiology research as these data can be combined with other public health datasets (eg, physical activity levels) to provide real-time monitoring of psychological and behavior outcomes that inform health behaviors. Currently, it is unclear whether Twitter data can be used to monitor physical activity levels.ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to establish the feasibility of using Twitter data to monitor physical activity levels by assessing whether the frequency and sentiment of physical activity-related tweets were associated with physical activity levels across the United States.MethodsTweets were collected from Twitter's application programming interface (API) between January 10, 2017 and January 2, 2018. We used Twitter's garden hose method of collecting tweets, which provided a random sample of approximately 1% of all tweets with location metadata falling within the United States. Geotagged tweets were filtered. A list of physical activity-related hashtags was collected and used to further classify these geolocated tweets. Twitter data were merged with physical activity data collected as part of the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. Multiple linear regression models were fit to assess the relationship between physical activity-related tweets and physical activity levels by county while controlling for population and socioeconomic status measures.ResultsDuring the study period, 442,959,789 unique tweets were collected, of which 64,005,336 (14.44%) were geotagged with latitude and longitude coordinates. Aggregated data were obtained for a total of 3138 counties in the United States. The mean county-level percentage of physically active individuals was 74.05% (SD 5.2) and 75.30% (SD 4.96) after adjusting for age. The model showed that the percentage of physical activity-related tweets was significantly associated with physical activity levels (beta=.11; SE 0.2; P<.001) and age-adjusted physical activity (beta=.10; SE 0.20; P<.001) on a county level while adjusting for both Gini index and education level. However, the overall explained variance of the model was low (R2=.11). The sentiment of the physical activity-related tweets was not a significant predictor of physical activity level and age-adjusted physical activity on a county level after including the Gini index and education level in the model (P>.05).ConclusionsSocial media data may be a valuable tool for public health organizations to monitor physical activity levels, as it can overcome the time lag in the reporting of physical activity epidemiology data faced by traditional research methods (eg, surveys and observational studies). Consequently, this tool may have the potential to help public health organizations better mobilize and target physical activity interventions.

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Where Do People Vape? Insights from Twitter Data.

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Where Do People Vape? Insights from Twitter Data.

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