Department of Preventive Medicine, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, United States.
American Cancer Society, Washington, DC, United States.
J Med Internet Res. 2021 Jun 7;23(6):e25579. doi: 10.2196/25579.
Cultural trends in the United States, the nicotine consumer marketplace, and tobacco policies are changing.
The goal of this study was to identify and describe nicotine-related topics of conversation authored by the public and social bots on Twitter, including any misinformation or misconceptions that health education campaigns could potentially correct.
Twitter posts containing the term "nicotine" were obtained from September 30, 2018 to October 1, 2019. Methods were used to distinguish between posts from social bots and nonbots. Text classifiers were used to identify topics in posts (n=300,360).
Prevalent topics of posts included vaping, smoking, addiction, withdrawal, nicotine health risks, and quit nicotine, with mentions of going "cold turkey" and needing help in quitting. Cessation was a common topic, with mentions of quitting and stopping smoking. Social bots discussed unsubstantiated health claims including how hypnotherapy, acupuncture, magnets worn on the ears, and time spent in the sauna can help in smoking cessation.
Health education efforts are needed to correct unsubstantiated health claims on Twitter and ultimately direct individuals who want to quit smoking to evidence-based cessation strategies. Future interventions could be designed to follow these topics of discussions on Twitter and engage with members of the public about evidence-based cessation methods in near real time when people are contemplating cessation.
美国的文化趋势、尼古丁消费者市场和烟草政策正在发生变化。
本研究的目的是确定并描述公众和推特上的社交机器人发布的与尼古丁相关的话题，包括健康教育活动可能纠正的任何错误信息或误解。
从 2018 年 9 月 30 日到 2019 年 10 月 1 日，从推特上获取了包含“尼古丁”一词的帖子。使用了一些方法来区分来自社交机器人和非机器人的帖子。文本分类器被用于识别帖子中的主题（n=300360）。
帖子中常见的主题包括蒸气、吸烟、成瘾、戒断、尼古丁的健康风险以及戒除尼古丁，还提到了“突然停止”和需要帮助戒烟。戒烟是一个常见的话题，提到了戒烟和停止吸烟。社交机器人讨论了未经证实的健康声明，包括催眠疗法、针灸、戴在耳朵上的磁铁以及在桑拿房里度过的时间如何帮助戒烟。
需要开展健康教育活动，纠正推特上未经证实的健康声明，并最终将想要戒烟的人引导到基于证据的戒烟策略上。未来的干预措施可以设计为在推特上跟踪这些讨论话题，并在人们考虑戒烟时实时与公众成员就基于证据的戒烟方法进行互动。
