Harris Jenine K, Moreland-Russell Sarah, Choucair Bechara, Mansour Raed, Staub Mackenzie, Simmons Kendall
Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, United States.
J Med Internet Res. 2014 Oct 16;16(10):e238. doi: 10.2196/jmir.3622.
In January 2014, the Chicago City Council scheduled a vote on local regulation of electronic cigarettes as tobacco products. One week prior to the vote, the Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH) released a series of messages about electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) through its Twitter account. Shortly after the messages, or tweets, were released, the department's Twitter account became the target of a "Twitter bomb" by Twitter users sending more than 600 tweets in one week against the proposed regulation.
The purpose of our study was to examine the messages and tweet patterns in the social media response to the CDPH e-cigarette campaign.
We collected all tweets mentioning the CDPH in the week between the e-cigarette campaign and the vote on the new local e-cigarette policy. We conducted a content analysis of the tweets, used descriptive statistics to examine characteristics of involved Twitter users, and used network visualization and descriptive statistics to identify Twitter users prominent in the conversation.
Of the 683 tweets mentioning CDPH during the week, 609 (89.2%) were anti-policy. More than half of anti-policy tweets were about use of electronic cigarettes for cessation as a healthier alternative to combustible cigarettes (358/609, 58.8%). Just over one-third of anti-policy tweets asserted that the health department was lying or disseminating propaganda (224/609, 36.8%). Approximately 14% (96/683, 14.1%) of the tweets used an account or included elements consistent with "astroturfing"-a strategy employed to promote a false sense of consensus around an idea. Few Twitter users were from the Chicago area; Twitter users from Chicago were significantly more likely than expected to tweet in support of the policy.
Our findings may assist public health organizations to anticipate, recognize, and respond to coordinated social media campaigns.
2014年1月，芝加哥市议会计划就将电子烟作为烟草制品进行地方监管进行投票。在投票前一周，芝加哥公共卫生部（CDPH）通过其推特账户发布了一系列关于电子烟的信息。这些信息，即推文发布后不久，该部门的推特账户成为推特用户“推特炸弹”的目标，这些用户在一周内发送了600多条推文反对这项拟议的监管规定。
我们研究的目的是检查社交媒体对CDPH电子烟宣传活动的回应中的信息和推文模式。
我们收集了在电子烟宣传活动和新的地方电子烟政策投票之间的一周内提及CDPH的所有推文。我们对推文进行了内容分析，使用描述性统计来检查参与的推特用户的特征，并使用网络可视化和描述性统计来识别在对话中突出的推特用户。
在这一周内提及CDPH的683条推文中，609条（89.2%）是反政策的。超过一半的反政策推文是关于使用电子烟戒烟作为比可燃香烟更健康的选择（358/609，58.8%）。略多于三分之一的反政策推文声称卫生部门在说谎或传播宣传内容（224/609，36.8%）。大约14%（96/683，14.1%）的推文使用了一个账户或包含与“人造草皮”一致的元素——一种用于围绕一个想法营造虚假共识感的策略。很少有推特用户来自芝加哥地区；来自芝加哥的推特用户发推文支持该政策的可能性明显高于预期。
我们的研究结果可能有助于公共卫生组织预测、识别和应对协调一致的社交媒体活动。
