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

描述（由申请人提供）：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已经在社交媒体上进行了大量的讨论，这已经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，电子烟和社交媒体分析的交叉研究几乎不存在，更不用说可能显著提高电子烟研究人员和监管机构信息收集和分析能力的自动化系统，以促进循证科学调查和决策。这项拟议的跨学科电子烟研究的主要动机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，包括了解电子烟使用的原因，电子烟对健康的影响和作为减少和戒烟援助的功效，以及供应商的营销实践和相关利益相关者的反应。拟议努力的具体目标如下。目标1的重点是开发一个数据集，涵盖以英语为基础的社交媒体中与电子烟相关的大部分讨论，以及相关的社交网络活动。目标2涉及从已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以及对减少和戒烟的功效。Aim 3侧重于了解社交媒体中的电子烟营销以及相关利益相关者的相应反应。目标4涉及基于社交媒体的电子烟研究的综合信息学平台的开发。拟议的工作旨在实施一项社交媒体分析计划，该计划可以增加我们对电子烟使用原因、健康影响、减少和戒烟功效、营销实践、相关利益相关者在美国的反应的了解。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，我们的研究将利用社交媒体的财富进行分析和监管。我们还将开发新的方法和工具，以自动分析与电子烟相关的大规模社交媒体数据集。使用这些工具提出的实证研究有望产生新的见解，补充现有的研究，其中大部分仅依赖于调查数据和轶事。一个集成的基于网络的社会媒体信息系统，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态势感知支持，以有利于CTP任务和监管工作。

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.