Oral Nicotine Gum Discussions on Twitter: Content Analysis

Area of Science:

• Public Health
• Social Media Analysis
• Tobacco Control

Background:

• Oral nicotine gum, often packaged to resemble traditional chewing gum, is gaining popularity.
• Many brands lack FDA approval for smoking cessation purposes.
• Public discourse and sentiment surrounding oral nicotine gum on Twitter were examined.

Purpose of the Study:

• To analyze public discourse and sentiment regarding oral nicotine gum on Twitter.
• To identify key themes and user discussions related to oral nicotine gum.
• To assess the potential of social media for tracking cessation-related conversations.

Main Methods:

• Collected 19,171 unique tweets mentioning "nicotine gum" or "#nicotinegum" from January 1 to December 21, 2021.
• Conducted a content analysis on 2,152 tweets using an inductive approach and a generated codebook.
• Performed sentiment analysis on the collected tweets.

Main Results:

• The most prevalent themes were cessation (33.3%), personal experience (17.2%), and addiction (6.3%).
• Cessation tweets often focused on cigarette smoking cessation (58.4%) and successful experiences (21.6%).
• Other themes included cognitive enhancement, marketing, co-use with substances, and adverse effects; sentiment was predominantly neutral (44.2%) or positive (39.6%).

Conclusions:

• Approximately one-third of tweets discussed nicotine gum for smoking cessation, with mostly positive or neutral sentiment.
• Twitter can potentially track and facilitate cessation conversations.
• Further research should explore novel search terms and other social media platforms; monitoring marketing is crucial to prevent youth appeal.