Department of Prevention and Community Health, Milken Institute School of Public Health, The George Washington University, Washington, DC 20052, USA.
Department of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering, The George Washington University, Washington, DC 20052, USA.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Feb 1;19(3):1686. doi: 10.3390/ijerph19031686.
While an increasing body of the literature has documented the exposure to emerging tobacco products including heated tobacco products (HTPs) on social media, few studies have investigated the various stakeholders involved in the generation of promotional tobacco content. This study constructed a social network of Instagram users who posted IQOS content, a leading HTP brand, between 1 January and 5 April 2021 and identified users who positioned near the center of the network. We identified 4526 unique Instagram users who had created 19,951 IQOS-related posts during the study period. Nearly half of the users (42.1%) were business accounts authorized by Instagram, among which 59.0% belonged to Personal Goods and General Merchandise Stores and 18.1% belonged to Creators and Celebrities. For users with higher in-degree, out-degree, betweenness, and closeness centrality in the network, the majority of them were accounts directly associated with IQOS (e.g., containing "iqos" in username) or related to tobacco business as self-identified in the bio. Our findings further refine the social media marketing presence of tobacco products and suggest that the current self-regulatory efforts led by social media platforms are far from enough.
尽管越来越多的文献记录了在社交媒体上接触新兴烟草产品，包括加热烟草产品（HTP）的情况，但很少有研究调查参与生成宣传烟草内容的各种利益相关者。本研究构建了一个在 2021 年 1 月 1 日至 4 月 5 日期间发布 IQOS 内容（一种领先的 HTP 品牌）的 Instagram 用户的社交网络，并确定了位于网络中心附近的用户。我们确定了 4526 个在研究期间发布了 19951 条与 IQOS 相关帖子的独特 Instagram 用户。近一半的用户（42.1%）是 Instagram 授权的商业账户，其中 59.0%属于个人用品和一般商品商店，18.1%属于创作者和名人。对于网络中具有较高入度、出度、中介度和接近度中心性的用户，他们中的大多数是与 IQOS 直接相关的账户（例如，用户名中包含“iqos”），或者在个人资料中自我识别为与烟草业务相关。我们的研究结果进一步细化了烟草产品在社交媒体上的营销存在，并表明社交媒体平台主导的当前自我监管努力远远不够。
