What Online Communities Can Tell Us About Electronic Cigarettes and Hookah Use: A Study Using Text Mining and
Annie T Chen1, Shu-Hong Zhu, Mike Conway
1School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, United States. atchen@email.unc.edu.
Journal of Medical Internet Research
|October 1, 2015
Summary
Text mining online discussions reveals differences in electronic cigarette (e-cigarette) and hookah use experiences. Forums vary in health information density, impacting tobacco regulation and cessation interventions.
Area of Science:
- Public Health
- Digital Health
- Behavioral Science
Background:
- Rising popularity of e-cigarettes and hookah necessitates understanding user experiences for effective regulation.
- Online discussion forums offer insights into consumer behaviors and potential health implications of emerging tobacco products.
- Text mining provides a novel approach to analyze and compare user experiences across different platforms.
Purpose of the Study:
- To analyze online forum content to understand user experiences with e-cigarettes and hookah.
- To identify contextual factors influencing tobacco use behaviors across different online communities.
- To compare user experiences with combustible cigarettes, e-cigarettes, and hookah.
Main Methods:
- Lexicon-based extraction to identify and quantify contextual factors in forum discussions.
- Heat map visualization to compare the prevalence of contextual factors across forums.
- Topic modeling and Topic Bars visualization to analyze and compare thematic content related to tobacco use.
Main Results:
- Vapor Talk Health & Safety and Stopsmoking subreddit showed high prevalence of contextual factors.
- Discussions in Vapor Talk Health & Safety focused on symptoms and comparisons with combustible cigarettes.
- Stopsmoking subreddit discussions centered on psychological aspects of quitting; e-cigarette and hookah forums highlighted equipment and user culture.
Conclusions:
- Online forums differ in their potential to inform health-related behaviors and regulatory strategies.
- Identifying and visualizing health information density in forums can guide resource allocation.
- The experience of quitting smoking may differ significantly based on e-cigarette use.
- E-cigarette and hookah forums exhibit a 'hobbyist culture' with active information exchange, relevant for intervention design.
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