Zheng Zihe, Xie Zidian, Goniewicz Maciej, Rahman Irfan, Li Dongmei
Goergen Institute for Data Science University of Rochester Rochester, NY United States.
Department of Clinical and Translational Research University of Rochester Medical Center Rochester, NY United States.
JMIR Infodemiology. 2023 Apr 20;3:e40913. doi: 10.2196/40913. eCollection 2023.
Socializing is one of the main motivations for water pipe smoking. Restrictions on social gatherings during the COVID-19 pandemic might have influenced water pipe smokers' behaviors. As one of the most popular social media platforms, Reddit has been used to study public opinions and user experiences.
In this study, we aimed to examine the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on public perception and discussion of water pipe tobacco smoking using Reddit data.
We collected Reddit posts between December 1, 2018, and June 30, 2021, from a Reddit archive (PushShift) using keywords such as "waterpipe," "hookah," and "shisha." We examined the temporal trend in Reddit posts mentioning water pipes and different locations (such as homes and lounges or bars). The temporal trend was further tested using interrupted time series analysis. Sentiment analysis was performed to study the change in sentiment of water pipe-related posts before and during the pandemic. Topic modeling using latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) was used to examine major topics discussed in water pipe-related posts before and during the pandemic.
A total of 45,765 nonpromotion water pipe-related Reddit posts were collected and used for data analysis. We found that the weekly number of Reddit posts mentioning water pipes significantly increased at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic (<.001), and gradually decreased afterward (<.001). In contrast, Reddit posts mentioning water pipes and lounges or bars showed an opposite trend. Compared to the period before the COVID-19 pandemic, the average number of Reddit posts mentioning lounges or bars was lower at the beginning of the pandemic but gradually increased afterward, while the average number of Reddit posts mentioning the word "home" remained similar during the COVID-19 pandemic (=.29). While water pipe-related posts with a positive sentiment were dominant (12,526/21,182, 59.14% before the pandemic; 14,686/24,583, 59.74% after the pandemic), there was no change in the proportion of water pipe-related posts with different sentiments before and during the pandemic (=.19, =.26, and =.65 for positive, negative, and neutral posts, respectively). Most topics related to water pipes on Reddit were similar before and during the pandemic. There were more discussions about the opening and closing of hookah lounges or bars during the pandemic.
This study provides a first evaluation of the possible impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on public perceptions of and discussions about water pipes on Reddit.
社交是抽水烟的主要动机之一。2019年冠状病毒病疫情期间对社交聚会的限制可能影响了抽水烟者的行为。作为最受欢迎的社交媒体平台之一，Reddit已被用于研究公众意见和用户体验。
在本研究中，我们旨在利用Reddit数据研究2019年冠状病毒病疫情对公众对抽水烟的认知和讨论的影响。
我们使用“水烟筒”“水烟袋”和“水烟”等关键词，从Reddit存档（PushShift）中收集了2018年12月1日至2021年6月30日期间的Reddit帖子。我们研究了提及水烟筒和不同地点（如家庭和休闲室或酒吧）的Reddit帖子的时间趋势。使用中断时间序列分析对时间趋势进行了进一步测试。进行情感分析以研究疫情前和疫情期间与水烟相关帖子的情感变化。使用潜在狄利克雷分配（LDA）进行主题建模，以研究疫情前和疫情期间与水烟相关帖子中讨论的主要主题。
共收集了45765条与水烟相关的非推广Reddit帖子并用于数据分析。我们发现，在2019年冠状病毒病疫情开始时，提及水烟筒的Reddit帖子每周数量显著增加（<.001），随后逐渐减少（<.001）。相比之下，提及水烟筒和休闲室或酒吧的Reddit帖子呈现相反趋势。与2019年冠状病毒病疫情前的时期相比，在疫情开始时提及休闲室或酒吧的Reddit帖子平均数量较低，但随后逐渐增加，而在2019年冠状病毒病疫情期间提及“家”这个词的Reddit帖子平均数量保持相似（=.29）。虽然情感积极的与水烟相关的帖子占主导（疫情前为12526/21182，59.14%；疫情后为14686/24583，59.74%），但在疫情前和疫情期间，不同情感的与水烟相关帖子的比例没有变化（积极、消极和中性帖子的分别为=.19、=.26和=.65）。在Reddit上，疫情前和疫情期间与水烟相关的大多数主题相似。在疫情期间，关于水烟馆或酒吧的开业和关闭有更多讨论。
本研究首次评估了2019年冠状病毒病疫情对Reddit上公众对水烟的认知和讨论可能产生的影响。
