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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
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.
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