Investigating #vapingcessation in Twitter

Abstract

Abstract Evidence suggests that an increasing number of e-cigarette users report intentions and attempts to quit vaping. Since exposure to e-cigarette-related content on social media may influence e-cigarette and other tobacco product use, including potentially e-cigarette cessation, we aimed to explore vaping cessation-related posts on Twitter by utilizing a mixed-methods approach. We collected tweets pertaining to vaping cessation for the time period between January 2022 and December 2022 using snscrape. Tweets were scraped for the following hashtags: #vapingcessation, #quitvaping, and #stopJuuling. Data were analysed using Azure Machine Learning and Nvivo 12 software. Sentiment analysis revealed that vaping cessation-related tweets typically embody positive sentiment and are mostly produced in the U.S. and Australia. Our qualitative analysis identified six emerging themes: vaping cessation support, promotion of vaping cessation, barriers and benefits to vaping cessation, personal vaping cessation, and usefulness of peer support for vaping cessation. Our findings imply that improved dissemination of evidence-based vaping cessation strategies to a broad audience through Twitter may promote vaping cessation at the population level.