Truth Initiative, Washington, DC, United States.
Front Public Health. 2023 Jan 9;10:1001115. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2022.1001115. eCollection 2022.
Youth and young adults are exposed to vaping advertisements on social media sites, despite regulations and guidelines intended to reduce the prevalence of such content on these platforms. This research uses replicable criteria to identify vaping influencers who have worked with vaping brands to promote vaping products on Instagram and documents the extent to which posts by these users comply with existing advertising regulations.
We conducted three google searches collecting eight different vaping influencer lists, with a total of 575 unique influencers. We limited our sample to public accounts with 100,000 followers or more ( = 54). An initial sample of 360 Instagram posts was used to identify an analytic sample of 262 vape-related posts from 2021. We conducted a conceptual content analysis to first identify unambiguous vaping advertisements (branded content), and then code ads for compliance with existing regulations.
On average, the 54 Instagram accounts had 265,851.9 followers (sd = 383,349.8) and 4,158 posts (sd = 7,302.1). Most posts featured vaping products 239 (91.2%), with 186 (76.2%) posts being unambiguously branded vape advertisements and 31 (14.3%) even including purchase links in the post itself. However, one post complied with FTC disclosure guidelines. Although 50 (20.9%) had warning labels, only 8 (15.1%) were fully compliant with FDA warning label guidelines.
Findings demonstrate minimal compliance with existing regulations among influencers known to have financial relationships with vaping brands. Most influencer posts are unambiguous, branded, vaping advertisements. Implications for barriers to regulating influencer content and the need for greater enforcement resources are discussed.
尽管有旨在减少此类内容在这些平台上出现的法规和指南，但青少年和年轻人仍会在社交媒体网站上看到电子烟广告。本研究使用可复制的标准来识别与电子烟品牌合作在 Instagram 上推广电子烟产品的电子烟影响者，并记录这些用户的帖子在多大程度上符合现有广告法规。
我们进行了三次谷歌搜索，收集了 8 个不同的电子烟影响者名单，共有 575 个独特的影响者。我们将样本限制在拥有 100,000 名以上粉丝的公开账户（=54）。我们使用 360 个初始 Instagram 帖子来确定 2021 年的 262 个电子烟相关帖子的分析样本。我们进行了概念内容分析，首先识别出明确的电子烟广告（品牌内容），然后对广告的合规性进行编码。
平均而言，54 个 Instagram 账户拥有 265,851.9 名粉丝（标准差=383,349.8）和 4,158 个帖子（标准差=7,302.1）。大多数帖子都展示了电子烟产品 239 次（91.2%），其中 186 次（76.2%）帖子是明确的电子烟品牌广告，31 次（14.3%）甚至在帖子中包含了购买链接。然而，只有一个帖子符合 FTC 披露准则。尽管有 50 个（20.9%）带有警告标签，但只有 8 个（15.1%）完全符合 FDA 警告标签准则。
研究结果表明，与电子烟品牌有财务关系的知名影响者中，只有极少数遵守了现行法规。大多数影响者的帖子都是明确的、品牌化的电子烟广告。讨论了影响者内容监管的障碍和需要更多执法资源的问题。
