Silver Nathan A, Kierstead Elexis C, Emery Sherry L, Binns Steven, Guy Mignonne C, Schillo Barbara
Truth Initiative Schroeder Institute, Washington, District of Columbia, USA
Truth Initiative Schroeder Institute, Washington, District of Columbia, USA.
Tob Control. 2024 Jul 26. doi: 10.1136/tc-2024-058719.
The tobacco industry has spent millions of dollars promoting racialised narratives against the US Food and Drug Administration's recently announced ban on menthol as a characterising cigarette flavour. This research investigates racialised narratives in online discourse following the ban's announcement.
Tweets and users responding to the April 2022 menthol ban announcement were content analysed to examine the influence of tobacco industry affiliates and potentially organic African-American/Black (AA/B) users. Next we investigated the extent to which the menthol ban was discussed on AA/B subreddits and used Latent Dirichlet Allocation topic modelling to provide an overview of the menthol ban discussion on Reddit.
Only 28 (13.9%) tweets by 22 users claimed that the menthol ban would lead to police violence and/or racial discrimination. Of users who tweeted about over-policing, eight (36.4%) had financial connections to the tobacco industry. There were only three tweets receiving a combined seven retweets from potentially organic AA/B users. On Reddit, only two posts with one comment discussed the menthol ban on subreddits dedicated to AA/B issues and culture. Topic modelling showed that the most common topic related to the menthol ban involved the social and political implications of the ban followed by illicit markets and protecting youth.
Tweets claiming a menthol ban will lead to police violence are indicative of industry agenda-setting. The menthol ban was not a prominent topic of discussion in AA/B subreddits although users discussing news and politics expressed concern for how AA/B people would respond to a ban politically.
烟草行业花费数百万美元宣传针对美国食品药品监督管理局最近宣布的禁止薄荷醇作为特色卷烟口味的种族化叙事。本研究调查了该禁令宣布后在线话语中的种族化叙事。
对2022年4月薄荷醇禁令宣布后做出回应的推文和用户进行内容分析，以考察烟草行业附属机构以及潜在的自发的非裔美国/黑人（AA/B）用户的影响。接下来，我们调查了AA/B主题子版块上讨论薄荷醇禁令的程度，并使用潜在狄利克雷分配主题建模来概述Reddit上关于薄荷醇禁令的讨论。
22名用户发布的推文中，只有28条（13.9%）声称薄荷醇禁令会导致警察暴力和/或种族歧视。在发推文讨论过度执法的用户中，有8人（36.4%）与烟草行业存在经济联系。只有三条推文获得了潜在的自发AA/B用户总共7次的转发。在Reddit上，只有两篇帖子及一条评论在专门讨论AA/B问题和文化的子版块上讨论了薄荷醇禁令。主题建模显示，与薄荷醇禁令相关的最常见主题涉及该禁令的社会和政治影响，其次是非法市场和保护青少年。
声称薄荷醇禁令会导致警察暴力的推文表明了行业的议程设定。薄荷醇禁令在AA/B主题子版块上并非突出的讨论话题，尽管讨论新闻和政治的用户表达了对AA/B人群在政治上如何应对禁令的担忧。
