Understanding E-Cigarette Adoption and Marketing: A Social Media Study

描述(申请人提供)：电子烟被广泛视为一种颠覆性技术，有可能重塑烟草行业，甚至可能重塑销售尼古丁替代产品的制药公司。电子烟供应商、消费者和其他相关利益相关者在社交媒体上进行了大量讨论，这已成为了解电子烟使用行为、健康影响和营销实践的关键来源。然而，在电子烟和社交媒体分析的交叉领域的研究几乎不存在，更不用说自动化系统了，这些系统可能会显著提高电子烟研究人员和监管机构的信息收集和分析能力，以促进基于证据的科学查询和政策制定。这项拟议的跨学科电子烟研究的主要目的是提供社交媒体数据驱动的科学发现和技术驱动的信息学工具，以解决FDA CTP研究的优先事项，涉及了解电子烟使用的原因、电子烟作为减烟和戒烟辅助工具的健康影响和功效、以及供应商的营销实践和相关利益相关者的反应。拟议工作的具体目标如下。Aim 1专注于开发一个数据集，涵盖以英语为基础的社交媒体中与电子烟相关的讨论的很大一部分，以及相关的社交网络活动。目标2涉及从开发的数据收集中识别电子烟消费者，提取社交媒体用户使用电子烟的原因，并了解电子烟对健康的影响和减少吸烟和戒烟的功效。目标3重点了解电子烟在社交媒体上的营销以及相关利益相关者的相应反应。目标4涉及为基于社交媒体的电子烟研究开发一个综合信息学平台。这项拟议的工作旨在实施一项社交媒体分析计划，以增加我们对电子烟使用原因、对健康的影响、减少吸烟和戒烟的有效性、营销实践以及相关利益相关者在美国的反应的知识。我们的数据可以为FDA等监管机构带来重大好处，使他们能够更好地了解可能受到监管审查的营销和媒体。从数据来源的角度来看，我们的研究将利用丰富的社交媒体进行分析和监管。我们还将开发新的方法和工具，以实现对与电子烟相关的大规模社交媒体数据集的自动分析。使用这些工具的拟议实证研究预计将产生新的见解，以补充现有研究，其中大部分研究仅依赖调查数据和轶事。一个综合的基于网络的社交媒体信息学系统，以及专门用于电子烟研究的实时数据收集，将提供急需的信息和情况认识支持，以利于CTP特派团和监管工作。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): E-cigarettes are being widely viewed as a disruptive technology with the potential to reshape the tobacco industry and perhaps even pharmaceutical companies that market nicotine replacement products. E-cigarette vendors, consumers, and other related stakeholders have been engaged in voluminous discussions in social media, which has become a critical source for understanding e- cigarette use behavior, health effects, and marketing practice. Yet, research in the intersection of e- cigarettes and social media analytics is almost non-existent, let alone automated systems that could potentially significantly improve the e-cigarette researchers and regulatory bodies' information gathering and analysis capabilities to facilitate evidence-based scientific inquiries and policy-making. This proposed interdisciplinary e-cigarette research is primarily motivated to provide social media data- driven scientific findings and technology-driven informatics tools to address the FDA CTP research priorities concerning understanding of reasons for e-cigarette use, e-cigarettes' health effects and efficacy as a smoking reduction and cessation aid, and vendors' marketing practice and related stakeholders' response. The specific aims of the proposed efforts are as follows. Aim 1 is focused on developing a dataset covering a significant portion of e-cigarette-related discussions in the English-based social media, as well as related social networking activities. Aim 2 is concerned with identifying e-cigarette consumers from the developed data collection, extracting reasons for e-cigarette use among social media users, and understanding e-cigarettes' health effects and efficacy for smoking reduction and cessation. Aim 3 focuses on understanding e-cigarette marketing in social media and corresponding responses of the related stakeholders. Aim 4 is concerned with the development of an integrated informatics platform for social media-based e-cigarette research. The proposed work aims to implement a social media analytics plan that can increase our knowledge of e-cigarette use reasons, health effects, efficacy for smoking reduction and cessation, marketing practice, related stakeholders' response in the U.S. Our data could deliver significant benefit to regulatory agencies like the FDA so that they can develop a better understanding of marketing and media that could come under their regulatory review. From the point of view of data sources, our studies will tap into th wealth of social media for analytical and regulatory purposes. We will also develop novel methods and tools to enable automatic analysis of large-scale social media datasets relevant to e-cigarettes. The proposed empirical studies using these tools are expected to generate fresh insights that complement existing research, much of which relies on survey data and anecdotes only. An integrated Web-based social media informatics system, along with a live data collection dedicated to e-cigarette research, will provide much-needed information and situational awareness support to benefit CTP missions and regulatory work.