TY - JOUR
T1 - JUUL the heartbreaker
T2 - Twitter analysis of cardiovascular health perceptions of vaping
AU - Hong, Traci
AU - Wu, Jiaxi
AU - Wijaya, Derry
AU - Xuan, Ziming
AU - Fetterman, Jessica L.
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors have each completed and submitted an ICMJE form for disclosure of potential conflicts of interest. The authors declare that they have no competing interests, financial or otherwise, related to the current work. J. Wu reports grants from American Heart Association, and grants from NHLBI, outside the submitted work. J.L. Fetterman reports grants from American Heart Association and grants from NHLBI, during the conduct of the study.
Funding Information:
This work was partially supported by the Evans Center for Interdisciplinary Biomedical Research ARC on Tobacco Regulatory Science at Boston University (https://www.bumc.bu.edu/ evanscenteribr/).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Hong T. et al.
PY - 2021/1
Y1 - 2021/1
N2 - Introduction: The public most frequently associates tobacco use solely with pulmonary health risks, despite heart disease being the leading cause of death in smokers. The health perceptions of e-cigarettes, especially cardiovascular health, have not been well studied. We aimed to evaluate the prevalence and health perceptions of tweets related to cardiovascular, pulmonary, and brain health - three organ systems for which tobacco use is a major disease risk factor. Methods: We examined the cardiovascular, pulmonary, and brain health perceptions of vaping and JUUL on Twitter, followed by a content analysis of tweets pertaining to the cardiovascular risks. A Twitter firehose API scraped about 6.2 million publicly available tweets from 2015.2019 that contained vaping-related terms, and a separate dataset of about 1.9 million tweets that contained the term JUUL. A quantitative content analysis (n=2145) of tweets was subsequently conducted to assess the health perceptions of vaping and JUUL. Two trained coders independently assessed the posts and Twitter profiles to determine age (<18 or ≥18 years), sex, race, sentiment towards JUUL, and vaping-related topics. Results: The majority of tweets containing vaping or JUUL-related terms did not also contain cardiovascular, pulmonary, or brain health terms (97.99% and 96.67%, respectively). Multiple linear regression analysis showed that youth (<18 years), females, non-White individuals, mention of a flavor, and mention of cardiovascular health harm words were associated with more positive sentiments towards JUUL. Pearson's chi-squared analyses indicated that youth were more likely to mention a JUUL flavor. Females and youth were more likely to reference cardiovascular terms with humor. Conclusions: The cardiovascular health risks of vaping are not fully recognized by the public. Vulnerable populations such as youth and females reference JUUL with cardiovascular-related words that downplay the severity of tobacco as a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease.
AB - Introduction: The public most frequently associates tobacco use solely with pulmonary health risks, despite heart disease being the leading cause of death in smokers. The health perceptions of e-cigarettes, especially cardiovascular health, have not been well studied. We aimed to evaluate the prevalence and health perceptions of tweets related to cardiovascular, pulmonary, and brain health - three organ systems for which tobacco use is a major disease risk factor. Methods: We examined the cardiovascular, pulmonary, and brain health perceptions of vaping and JUUL on Twitter, followed by a content analysis of tweets pertaining to the cardiovascular risks. A Twitter firehose API scraped about 6.2 million publicly available tweets from 2015.2019 that contained vaping-related terms, and a separate dataset of about 1.9 million tweets that contained the term JUUL. A quantitative content analysis (n=2145) of tweets was subsequently conducted to assess the health perceptions of vaping and JUUL. Two trained coders independently assessed the posts and Twitter profiles to determine age (<18 or ≥18 years), sex, race, sentiment towards JUUL, and vaping-related topics. Results: The majority of tweets containing vaping or JUUL-related terms did not also contain cardiovascular, pulmonary, or brain health terms (97.99% and 96.67%, respectively). Multiple linear regression analysis showed that youth (<18 years), females, non-White individuals, mention of a flavor, and mention of cardiovascular health harm words were associated with more positive sentiments towards JUUL. Pearson's chi-squared analyses indicated that youth were more likely to mention a JUUL flavor. Females and youth were more likely to reference cardiovascular terms with humor. Conclusions: The cardiovascular health risks of vaping are not fully recognized by the public. Vulnerable populations such as youth and females reference JUUL with cardiovascular-related words that downplay the severity of tobacco as a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease.
KW - E-cigarettes
KW - Electronic cigarettes
KW - Health perceptions
KW - JUUL
KW - Twitter
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85100321571&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.18332/TID/130961
DO - 10.18332/TID/130961
M3 - Article
C2 - 33437228
AN - SCOPUS:85100321571
VL - 19
SP - 1
EP - 6
JO - Tobbaco Induced Diseases
JF - Tobbaco Induced Diseases
SN - 1617-9625
IS - 1
ER -
