Cavazos-Rehg Patricia, Krauss Melissa, Grucza Richard, Bierut Laura
Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, United States.
J Med Internet Res. 2014 Jun 27;16(6):e157. doi: 10.2196/jmir.3247.
Twitter is a popular social media forum for sharing personal experiences, interests, and opinions. An improved understanding of the discourse on Twitter that encourages marijuana use can be helpful for tailoring and targeting online and offline prevention messages.
The intent of the study was to assess the content of "tweets" and the demographics of followers of a popular pro-marijuana Twitter handle (@stillblazingtho).
We assessed the sentiment and content of tweets (sent from May 1 to December 31, 2013), as well as the demographics of consumers that follow a popular pro-marijuana Twitter handle (approximately 1,000,000 followers) using Twitter analytics from Demographics Pro. This analytics company estimates demographic characteristics based on Twitter behavior/usage, relying on multiple data signals from networks, consumption, and language and requires confidence of 95% or above to make an estimate of a single demographic characteristic.
A total of 2590 tweets were sent from @stillblazingtho during the 8-month period and 305 (11.78%) replies to another Twitter user were excluded for qualitative analysis. Of the remaining 2285 tweets, 1875 (82.06%) were positive about marijuana, 403 (17.64%) were neutral, and 7 (0.31%) appeared negative about marijuana. Approximately 1101 (58.72%) of the positive marijuana tweets were perceived as jokes or humorous, 340 (18.13%) implied that marijuana helps you to feel good or relax, 294 (15.68%) mentioned routine, frequent, or heavy use, 193 (10.29%) mentioned blunts, marijuana edibles, or paraphernalia (eg, bongs, vaporizers), and 186 (9.92%) mentioned other risky health behaviors (eg, tobacco, alcohol, other drugs, sex). The majority (699,103/959,143; 72.89%) of @stillblazingtho followers were 19 years old or younger. Among people ages 17 to 19 years, @stillblazingtho was in the top 10% of all Twitter handles followed. More followers of @stillblazingtho in the United States were African American (323,107/759,407; 42.55%) or Hispanic (90,732/759,407; 11.95%) than the Twitter median average (African American 22.4%, inter-quartile ratio [IQR] 5.1-62.5%; Hispanic 5.4%, IQR 3.0-10.8%) and among Hispanics, @stillblazingtho was in the top 30% of all Twitter handles followed.
Young people are especially responsive to social media influences and often establish substance use patterns during this phase of development. Our findings underscore the need for surveillance efforts to monitor the pro-marijuana content reaching young people on Twitter.
推特是一个用于分享个人经历、兴趣和观点的热门社交媒体平台。更好地理解推特上鼓励使用大麻的言论，有助于制定和定位线上及线下的预防信息。
本研究旨在评估一个热门亲大麻推特账号（@stillblazingtho）的推文内容及其关注者的人口统计学特征。
我们使用Demographics Pro的推特分析工具，评估了2013年5月1日至12月31日期间该账号发布的推文的情感倾向和内容，以及关注该热门亲大麻推特账号（约100万关注者）的用户的人口统计学特征。这家分析公司根据推特行为/使用情况估算人口统计学特征，依赖来自网络、消费和语言的多个数据信号，并且在估算单一人口统计学特征时要求置信度达到95%或以上。
在这8个月期间，@stillblazingtho共发布了2590条推文，其中305条（11.78%）回复其他推特用户的推文被排除用于定性分析。在其余2285条推文中，1875条（82.06%）对大麻持积极态度，403条（17.64%）态度中立，7条（0.31%）对大麻持负面态度。在对大麻持积极态度的推文中，约1101条（58.72%）被视为玩笑或幽默内容，340条（18.13%）暗示大麻能让人感觉良好或放松，294条（15.68%）提及日常、频繁或大量使用，193条（10.29%）提及大麻烟、大麻食品或用具（如水烟枪、蒸发器），186条（9.92%）提及其他危险健康行为（如烟草、酒精、其他毒品、性行为）。@stillblazingtho的关注者中，大多数（699,103/959,143；72.89%）年龄在19岁及以下。在17至19岁人群中，@stillblazingtho是所有被关注的推特账号中排名前10%的账号。与推特的中位数平均水平相比，@stillblazingtho在美国的非裔美国关注者（323,
