Lee Juhan, Murthy Dhiraj, Kong Grace
Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA.
University of Texas at Austin, School of Journalism and Media, Department of Sociology, Austin, TX, US.
medRxiv. 2023 Jan 9:2023.01.06.23284266. doi: 10.1101/2023.01.06.23284266.
E-cigarettes are frequently promoted on social media and portrayed in ways that are attractive to youth. While COVID-19 pandemic significantly affected people's lives, less known is how the pandemic influenced e-cigarette-related marketing and information on social media. This study identifies how e-cigarettes are portrayed during the COVID-19 pandemic on YouTube, one of the most popular social media platforms.
We searched for combinations of search terms related to e-cigarettes (i.e., "electronic cigarette", "e-cigarette", "e-cig", "vape" and "vaping") and COVID-19 (i.e., "corona", "COVID", "lockdown" and "pandemic"). To be included in the analysis, the video must be: uploaded after February 1, 2020, in English, related to e-cigarettes and COVID-19 and less than 30 minutes in length. We assessed video themes related to e-cigarettes and COVID-19, uploader characteristics, and featured e-cigarette products.
We examined N=307 videos and found that N=220 (73.6%) were related to the health effects of e-cigarette use on COVID-19, followed by videos of how COVID-19 affects e-cigarette access/sales (N=40, 12.9%), and face mask-related videos (N=16, 5.1%) which included content regarding masks and e-cigarette use. Instructional videos on how to modify e-cigarettes to use with masks had the highest number of likes (Median=23; IQR=32) and comments (Median=10; IQR=7).
This study identified various e-cigarette contents on YouTube during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings support the need for continuous surveillance on novel vaping-related content in reaction to policies and events such as the global pandemic on social media is needed.
电子烟在社交媒体上经常被推广，其呈现方式对年轻人具有吸引力。虽然新冠疫情极大地影响了人们的生活，但疫情如何影响与电子烟相关的社交媒体营销和信息却鲜为人知。本研究确定了在新冠疫情期间，电子烟在最受欢迎的社交媒体平台之一YouTube上是如何被呈现的。
我们搜索了与电子烟（即“电子烟”“电子香烟”“电子烟油”“vape”和“vaping”）以及新冠疫情（即“冠状病毒”“COVID”“封锁”和“大流行”）相关的搜索词组合。要纳入分析，视频必须：在2020年2月1日之后上传，为英文，与电子烟和新冠疫情相关，且时长少于30分钟。我们评估了与电子烟和新冠疫情相关的视频主题、上传者特征以及特色电子烟产品。
我们审查了N = 307个视频，发现N = 220个（73.6%）与使用电子烟对新冠疫情的健康影响相关，其次是关于新冠疫情如何影响电子烟获取/销售的视频（N = 40，12.9%），以及与口罩相关的视频（N = 16，5.1%），其中包括关于口罩和电子烟使用的内容。关于如何改装电子烟以便与口罩配合使用的教学视频点赞数最多（中位数 = 23；四分位距 = 32），评论数也最多（中位数 = 10；四分位距 = 7）。
本研究确定了新冠疫情期间YouTube上的各种电子烟相关内容。我们的研究结果支持，需要针对诸如全球疫情等政策和事件，持续监测社交媒体上与新型电子烟相关的内容。
