Using Twitter to Examine Smoking Behavior and Perceptions of Emerging Tobacco Products

Abstract

Novel insights available through Twitter for tobacco surveillance are attested through the high prevalence of positive sentiment. This positive sentiment is correlated in complex ways with social image, personal experience, and recently popular products such as hookah and electronic cigarettes. Several apparent perceptual disconnects between these products and their health effects suggest opportunities for tobacco control education. Finally, machine classification of tobacco-related posts shows a promising edge over strictly keyword-based approaches, yielding an improved signal-to-noise ratio in Twitter data and paving the way for automated tobacco surveillance applications.