An Examination of Electronic Cigarette Content on Social Media: Analysis of E-Cigarette Flavor Content on Reddit
by
Lei Wang 1
, Yongcheng Zhan 2, Qiudan Li 3,*, Daniel D. Zeng 2,3, Scott J. Leischow 4 and Janet Okamoto 4
Lei Wang 1, Yongcheng Zhan 2, Qiudan Li 3,*, Daniel D. Zeng 2,3, Scott J. Leischow 4 and Janet Okamoto 4
1
College of Management and Economics, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, China
2
Department of Management Information Systems, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA
3
The State Key Laboratory of Management and Control for Complex Systems, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China
4
Mayo Clinic, Scottsdale, AZ 85259, USA
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Academic Editors: Coral Gartner and Britta Wigginton
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2015, 12(11), 14916-14935; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph121114916
Received: 18 September 2015 / Revised: 16 November 2015 / Accepted: 17 November 2015 / Published: 20 November 2015
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Tobacco Control 2015)
In recent years, the emerging electronic cigarette (e-cigarette) marketplace has shown great development prospects all over the world. Reddit, one of the most popular forums in the world, has a very large user group and thus great influence. This study aims to gain a systematic understanding of e-cigarette flavors based on data collected from Reddit. Flavor popularity, mixing, characteristics, trends, and brands are analyzed. Fruit flavors were mentioned the most (n = 15,720) among all the posts and were among the most popular flavors (n = 2902) used in mixed blends. Strawberry and vanilla flavors were the most popular for e-juice mixing. The number of posts discussing e-cigarette flavors has increased sharply since 2014. Mt. Baker Vapor and Hangen were the most popular brands discussed among users. Information posted on Reddit about e-cigarette flavors reflected consumers’ interest in a variety of flavors. Our findings suggest that Reddit could be used for data mining and analysis of e-cigarette-related content. Understanding how e-cigarette consumers’ view and utilize flavors within their vaping experience and how producers and marketers use social media to promote flavors and sell products could provide valuable information for regulatory decision-makers.
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Keywords:
e-cigarette flavor; social media; Reddit; e-juice; e-liquid
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This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Wang, L.; Zhan, Y.; Li, Q.; Zeng, D.D.; Leischow, S.J.; Okamoto, J. An Examination of Electronic Cigarette Content on Social Media: Analysis of E-Cigarette Flavor Content on Reddit. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2015, 12, 14916-14935.
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