Digital Surveillance to Identify California Alternative and Emerging Tobacco Industry Policy Influence and Mobilization on Facebook

Qing Xu, Joshua Yang, Michael R. Haupt, Mingxiang Cai, Matthew C. Nali and Tim K. Mackey
Additional contact information
Qing Xu: Global Health Policy and Data Institute, San Diego, CA 92121, USA
Joshua Yang: Department of Public Health, California State University, Fullerton, CA 92834, USA
Michael R. Haupt: Global Health Policy and Data Institute, San Diego, CA 92121, USA
Mingxiang Cai: Global Health Policy and Data Institute, San Diego, CA 92121, USA
Matthew C. Nali: Global Health Policy and Data Institute, San Diego, CA 92121, USA
Tim K. Mackey: Global Health Policy and Data Institute, San Diego, CA 92121, USA

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 21, 1-12

Abstract: Growing popularity of electronic nicotine-delivery systems (ENDS) has coincided with a need to strengthen tobacco-control policy. In response, the ENDS industry has taken actions to mobilize against public health measures, including coordination on social media platforms. To explore this phenomenon, data mining was used to collect public posts on two Facebook public group pages: the California Consumer Advocates for Smoke Free Alternatives Association (CCASAA) and the community page of the Northern California Chapter of SFATA (NC-SFATA). Posts were manually annotated to characterize themes associated with industry political interference and user interaction. We collected 288 posts from the NC-SFATA and 411 posts from CCASAA. A total of 522 (74.7%) posts were categorized as a form of political interference, with 339 posts (64.9%) from CCASAA and 183 posts (35.1%) from NC-SFATA. We identified three different categories of policy interference-related posts: (1) providing updates on ENDS-related policy at the federal, state, and local levels; (2) sharing opinions about ENDS-related policies; (3) posts related to scientific information related to vaping; and (4) calls to action to mobilize against tobacco/ENDS policies. Our findings indicate that pro-tobacco social media communities on Facebook, driven by strategic activities of trade associations and their members, may act as focal points for anti-policy information dissemination, grass-roots mobilization, and industry coordination that needs further research.

Keywords: tobacco control; electronic cigarettes; social media; Facebook; public policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/21/11150/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/21/11150/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:21:p:11150-:d:663331

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().