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Abstract
Introduction Reddit is a popular social media platform for sharing information about vaping. Little is known about the types of external resources that Reddit users in vaping communities share and engage with.
Methods We analysed 2315 posts containing uniform resource locators (URLs) published to vaping communities on Reddit between November 2021 and October 2022. We coded URLs into eight mutually exclusive domain types. A mixed-effects Poisson regression model examined whether domain type was associated with user engagement (ie, number of unique commenters).
Results Posts contained links to social media (35%), image hosting (31%), vaping-related commerce (19%), eJuice (12%), general vaping (6%), news (2%) and research (1%) URL domains. There were 237 unique vaping-related commerce domains (eg, ziipstock.com). The average number of commenters per post was 5.43 (SD=8.04). The rate of commenters was higher for posts sharing research (adjusted rate ratio (aRR) 1.74, 95% CI 1.28 to 2.36) and news (aRR 1.56, 95% CI 1.02 to 2.38) domains compared with vape-related commerce domains.
Conclusion Reddit users in vaping communities share and interact with a variety of external resources. The >200 different vaping-related commerce domains in our sample speak to the breadth and availability of websites that Reddit users (perhaps even those underage) may be using to browse and purchase vaping devices.
- Electronic nicotine delivery devices
- Surveillance and monitoring
- Media
Statistics from Altmetric.com
WHAT IS ALREADY KNOWN ON THIS SUBJECT
Reddit is a popular social media platform for sharing information about vaping.
A large proportion of individuals interacting with vaping-related content on Reddit may be under the age of 21.
WHAT IMPORTANT GAPS IN KNOWLEDGE EXIST ON THIS TOPIC
We do not know what types of online resources individuals in vaping communities on Reddit are sharing and engaging with.
WHAT THIS STUDY ADDS
From November 2021 to October 2022, more than 200 unique vaping-related commerce uniform resource locator domains were shared with vaping communities on Reddit; research and news resources were shared less frequently.
Knowing what resources people are sharing can inform future vaping prevention and control initiatives on this platform.
Introduction
There is a substantial discourse about vaping on Reddit.1–3 While vaping subreddits (ie, the term Reddit uses to refer to topic-specific community forums) typically require subscribers to be 21+, Redditors do not have to disclose their age, and evidence suggests individuals aged 13–20 (ie, underage) talk about vaping on the site.3 More than one-third of middle and high school students in the USA (~9 million adolescents) reported seeing promotional e-cigarette content on the internet.4 This is problematic given that evidence suggests youth and young adult exposure to tobacco content on social media (including Reddit) is associated with vaping,5 6 and because vaping poses several health harms (eg, risk of nicotine addiction, exposure to chemicals, increased likelihood of using other tobacco products).7 8 Thus, it is critical to know what information is disseminated among vaping communities on Reddit.
One way to assess information sharing on Reddit is to examine the URLs (uniform resource locator or a website link) embedded in posts. Evidence suggests vaping-related marketing and promotional content is popular on Reddit.9 Posts sharing URLs linking to online tobacco retail websites could make it easier for those underage to purchase these products, as has been shown in prior studies.10 11 In addition, some URLs could link to websites providing misleading or even dangerous information about vaping (eg, recipes for experimental eJuices), which is concerning given evidence about the prevalence of vaping misinformation shared on social media.12–14
Although past work has examined vaping topics in the text of social media posts,9 15 16 no studies have systematically analysed the URLs shared in these posts. This study characterised the topics and prevalence of different URL domains shared among vaping subreddits and assessed whether links to certain external resources led to increased engagement. Knowing what types of external resources Redditors are sharing and engaging with could inform tobacco control policies on this platform.
Methods
Data collection
Data were Reddit posts containing one or more URLs published to 1 of 19 vaping subreddit communities identified from prior evidence and inductive searches (see online supplemental material).1 We excluded subreddits dedicated to vaping other substances (eg, r/vaporents), as well as subreddits that have been banned or removed by Reddit. The data collection period was November 2021 to October 2022. We used Pushshift17 (an online archive of historical Reddit content) to collect the data. We removed autogenerated posts published by moderator bots and have since deleted Redditors. These efforts yielded N=2737 posts.
Supplemental material
Categorising URL domains
We extracted all URLs from the data, and reduced them to their parent domains (eg, ‘google.com/example_1’ and ‘google.com/example_2’ were transformed to ‘google.com’). This process identified 699 unique domains, which we coded into nine mutually exclusive types: (1) vaping-related commerce—domains selling vaping devices or vape manufacturer websites; (2) eJuice—domains about liquid flavours or additives used in eJuice recipes; (3) general vaping—non-commercial domains about tobacco use or vaping; (4) news—domains linking to news media; (5) research—domains linking to university, government or academic research websites; (6) social media—domains linking to social media platforms; (7) image hosting—domains linking to image hosting platforms; (8) other—all other domains not coded in the previous types and (9) inaccessible—inaccessible domains that could not be coded. See table 1 for an overview and examples of each domain type.
Descriptive overview of Reddit posts by URL domain types; N=2315
We chose domain types based on inductive assessments and a review of the data. This review identified some websites that sold vaping devices and eJuice liquids. Thus, to distinguish these two categories, we coded domains as vaping-related commerce so long as the corresponding website sold vaping devices (ie, vaporisers); websites that exclusively sold eJuice liquids or that catalogued eJuice recipes were coded in the eJuice domain. Two study authors (JR and AM) independently coded each domain (Krippendorff’s reliability α=0.82; 86.7% agreement).18 There were 615 unique domains after removing those coded inaccessible.
Data analysis
We removed posts sharing only inaccessible domains, resulting in a final analytical sample of N=2315. We used descriptive statistics to characterise the prevalence of domain types and computed a mixed-effects Poisson regression (accounting for correlated random intercepts of Reddit authors and subreddit communities) to evaluate the impact of domain type on the discrete number of unique commenters (excluding original authors) to the posts.19 We interpret this outcome as a proxy for engagement. The model was restricted to posts sharing one domain type; though, posts could share multiple of the same domain types (ie, a post sharing two unique eJuice URLs). Posts linking to only social media or image hosting domain types were excluded from analysis because some of the content overlapped (eg, images of other social media posts) and could include very broad content. We also excluded posts linking only to other domain types due to high within-domain heterogeneity (eg, ‘amazon.com,’ ‘patreon.com’ and ‘philanthropy.com’). The remaining domain types (vaping-related commerce(reference), eJuice, general vaping, research and news) and whether posts shared more than one URL were model predictors. We exponentiated model coefficients to represent adjusted rate ratios (aRRs). Analyses were computed by using R (V.4.1.2).
Results
A modest proportion of Reddit posts contained URLs linking to social media (35%; table 1), image hosting (31%), vaping-related commerce (19%) and eJuice (12%) domains. Fewer posts shared URLs linking to general vaping (6%), news (2%) and research (1%) domains. 17% of posts shared multiple domain types (eg, general vaping and vaping-related commerce).
Most (85%) posts had at least one commenter, with the average number of commenters per post at 5.43 (SD=8.04). The rate of commenters was higher among posts sharing research (aRR=1.74, 95% CI=1.28 to 2.36; online supplemental table 1) and news (aRR=1.56, 95% CI=1.02 to 2.38) domains compared with vaping-related commerce domains. There were no differences in the rate of commenters in posts sharing eJuice and general vaping domains compared with vaping-related commerce domains.
Discussion
This study characterised the prevalence of and engagement with different URL domains shared among vaping communities on Reddit. Vaping and e-cigarette marketing on social media is a public health concern20 and was evident in the current investigation. Nearly one-fifth of the Reddit posts in our sample shared links to retail websites selling vaping products (eg, ziipstock.com). Of those posts, we identified over 200 unique domains. These findings speak to the breadth of online tobacco retailers that users on vaping subreddits may be exposed to. This is problematic given that many users seeing this content may be underage,3 and that prior evidence shows that youth and young adult exposure to vaping marketing on social media has been associated with tobacco product use.5 6 The high number of vaping-related commerce websites on Reddit is also concerning given that online tobacco vendors rarely or ineffectively implement age verification strategies, suggesting youth and young adults exposed to these links could have the means to circumvent traditional age restriction barriers and purchase vaping products underage.10 11
We also found that fewer posts shared links to news and research websites (eg, jamanetwork.com, npr.org); however, engagement with these posts was higher than those sharing vaping-related commerce domains. This may be due to our sample’s proximal association with vaping culture. In a motivated reasoning framework, people who are exposed to health messages threatening their perceived identity are likely to engage in defensive processing.21 Posts linking to research or news domains may cover topics or current events (eg, policy regulations) that threaten the perceived identity of people who vape. In the current context, this could involve Reddit users in vaping communities negatively commenting on antivaping science to discount or reject the veracity of the content.
A limitation of this work was that there were 84 inaccessible domains (eg, 404 Page Not Found). This precluded us from capturing the full extent of external resources published on vaping subreddits and reduced our analytical sample. Another limitation is that the content of specific links was not assessed when categorising URLs into domain types. Thus, the topics covered in the general domain category or the credibility of information from any of the domains (eg, news or research websites) cannot be determined. One last limitation is that the Pushshift repository archives Reddit posts almost immediately after being published, meaning we were unable to examine domain type effects on other important engagement metrics such as upvotes (ie, likes).
In conclusion, this study highlights the various resources that are shared across online vaping communities on Reddit. These findings provide preliminary evidence about information-sharing behaviours in online vaping communities and offer a starting point for understanding the utility of Reddit (and other similar platforms) for vaping prevention and control. Examining social media discussions is a powerful tool for understanding public dialogue about vaping, particularly in a rapidly changing media and regulatory environment. The extent to which vaping-related commerce websites were shared indicates that future research should assess exposure to tobacco marketing and promotional content on social media platforms through external URLs, and test whether this exposure is associated with vaping, particularly among youth. Future work should also aim to build on our research by examining other variables that may be associated with the types of URL domains shared on Reddit, such as sentiment and other engagement metrics.
Ethics statements
Patient consent for publication
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Dr Samantha Cwalina for consulting on the design of this study.
Supplementary materials
Supplementary Data
This web only file has been produced by the BMJ Publishing Group from an electronic file supplied by the author(s) and has not been edited for content.
Footnotes
X @jacobrohde
Contributors JR: conceptualisation, methodology, writing–original draft, formal analysis; AM: conceptualisation, methodology, writing–reviewing and editing; HD’A: writing–reviewing and editing.
Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Disclaimer The opinions expressed by the authors are their own and this material should not be interpreted as representing the official viewpoint of RTI International, the US Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institutes of Health or the National Cancer Institute.
Competing interests No, there are no competing interests.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
Supplemental material This content has been supplied by the author(s). It has not been vetted by BMJ Publishing Group Limited (BMJ) and may not have been peer-reviewed. Any opinions or recommendations discussed are solely those of the author(s) and are not endorsed by BMJ. BMJ disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on the content. Where the content includes any translated material, BMJ does not warrant the accuracy and reliability of the translations (including but not limited to local regulations, clinical guidelines, terminology, drug names and drug dosages), and is not responsible for any error and/or omissions arising from translation and adaptation or otherwise.