Addressing e-cigarette health claims made on social media amidst the COVID-19 pandemic

Bandara, Nilanga Aki; Herath, Jay; Mehrnoush, Vahid

doi:10.1007/s12519-021-00410-7

Cited by 10 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 6 publications

(13 reference statements)

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“…Ultimately, industry-generated misinformation on e-cigs is a major concern in academic literature and can negatively impact the wellbeing of youth [4][5][6][7]. By promoting youth as stakeholders in the research and peer review process by creating a YAC, we can mitigate the risk of misinformation entering academic literature.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Moving forward, it is necessary to consider strategies that mitigate the spread of misinformation pertaining to e-cigs in academic literature, just one of the many methods of misinformation promotion. Recently, two authors of this paper suggested for academic journals to create accessible knowledge dissemination tools for youth as a method for combating misinformation [7]. However, the challenge of battling misinformation that can make its way into academic literature is a different issue in itself.…”

Section: Proposed Youth Engagement Strategymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Advocates for e-cig use often selectively cite scientific papers, using certain pro-vaping papers to strengthen their arguments while discrediting papers opposing their views. During the COVID-19 pandemic, misinformation pertaining to e-cigs has been circulated on social media platforms accessed by youth [7]. While it is not clear who is the source responsible for spreading this misinformation, it can be narrowed down either to the e-cig industry or casual social media users.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While it is not clear who is the source responsible for spreading this misinformation, it can be narrowed down either to the e-cig industry or casual social media users. Some of the misinformation contained inaccurate health claims that discussed the protective effects of e-cigs against becoming sick with COVID-19 [7].…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Engaging Youth to Address Misinformation Pertaining to E-Cigarettes: Youth Participation in the Research Process

Bandara¹

2022

Curr Res Psychol Behav Sc

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The electronic cigarette industry has been able to successfully reach youth across multiple platforms, including on social media. With the industry targeting various channels, youth are bombarded with a variety of information on e-cigarettes. On top of this, the industry was recently able to influence an academic journal by sponsoring a special issue. The information highlighted by these published studies may make it even more challenging for youth to conceptualize the true harm these products may pose. It may also further reduce the trust that youth have with evidence-based information generated by academia. In order to address these challenges, this article highlights youth-led strategies that the Current Research in Psychology and Behavioral Science may consider to reduce misinformation and the industry’s impact on academia.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Proposed Youth Engagement Strategymentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Engaging Youth to Address Misinformation Pertaining to E-Cigarettes: Youth Participation in the Research Process

Bandara¹

2022

Curr Res Psychol Behav Sc

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“…Although the study itself did not provide any evidence of a causal relationship between smoking and COVID-19 infection or progression, the authors posited that the anti-inflammatory properties of nicotine might be responsible for the unexpectedly low prevalence of COVID-19-infected smokers in countries with high smoking rates [12,13]. Although no subsequent evidence has been found to support a protective role of nicotine, the notion that smoking, vaping, or nicotine use would prevent COVID-19 circulated, leading researchers to document misinformation about smoking, vaping, and nicotine as being protective against COVID-19 across communication channels, particularly on Twitter [14][15][16].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Influence of Provaping “Gatewatchers” on the Dissemination of COVID-19 Misinformation on Twitter: Analysis of Twitter Discourse Regarding Nicotine and the COVID-19 Pandemic

Silver¹,

Kierstead²,

Kostygina³

et al. 2022

J Med Internet Res

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Background There is a lot of misinformation about a potential protective role of nicotine against COVID-19 spread on Twitter despite significant evidence to the contrary. We need to examine the role of vape advocates in the dissemination of such information through the lens of the gatewatching framework, which posits that top users can amplify and exert a disproportionate influence over the dissemination of certain content through curating, sharing, or, in the case of Twitter, retweeting it, serving more as a vector for misinformation rather than the source. Objective This research examines the Twitter discourse at the intersection of COVID-19 and tobacco (1) to identify the extent to which the most outspoken contributors to this conversation self-identify as vaping advocates and (2) to understand how and to what extent these vape advocates serve as gatewatchers through disseminating content about a therapeutic role of tobacco, nicotine, or vaping against COVID-19. Methods Tweets about tobacco, nicotine, or vaping and COVID-19 (N=1,420,271) posted during the first 9 months of the pandemic (January-September 2020) were identified from within a larger corpus of tobacco-related tweets using validated keyword filters. The top posters (ie, tweeters and retweeters) were identified and characterized, along with the most shared Uniform Resource Locators (URLs), most used hashtags, and the 1000 most retweeted posts. Finally, we examined the role of both top users and vape advocates in retweeting the most retweeted posts about the therapeutic role of nicotine, tobacco, or vaping against COVID-19. Results Vape advocates comprised between 49.7% (n=81) of top 163 and 88% (n=22) of top 25 users discussing COVID-19 and tobacco on Twitter. Content about the ability of tobacco, nicotine, or vaping to treat or prevent COVID-19 was disseminated broadly, accounting for 22.5% (n=57) of the most shared URLs and 10% (n=107) of the most retweeted tweets. Finally, among top users, retweets comprised an average of 78.6% of the posts from vape advocates compared to 53.1% from others (z=3.34, P<.001). Vape advocates were also more likely to retweet the top tweeted posts about a therapeutic role of nicotine, with 63% (n=51) of vape advocates retweeting at least 1 post compared to 40.3% (n=29) of other top users (z=2.80, P=.01). Conclusions Provaping users dominated discussions of tobacco use during the COVID-19 pandemic on Twitter and were instrumental in disseminating the most retweeted posts about a potential therapeutic role of tobacco use against the virus. Subsequent research is needed to better understand the extent of this influence and how to mitigate the influence of vape advocates over the broader narrative of tobacco regulation on Twitter.

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The genitourinary impacts of electronic cigarette use: a systematic review of the literature

Bandara,

Zhou,

Alhamam

et al. 2023

World J Urol

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Addressing e-cigarette health claims made on social media amidst the COVID-19 pandemic

Cited by 10 publications

References 6 publications

Engaging Youth to Address Misinformation Pertaining to E-Cigarettes: Youth Participation in the Research Process

Engaging Youth to Address Misinformation Pertaining to E-Cigarettes: Youth Participation in the Research Process

The Influence of Provaping “Gatewatchers” on the Dissemination of COVID-19 Misinformation on Twitter: Analysis of Twitter Discourse Regarding Nicotine and the COVID-19 Pandemic

The genitourinary impacts of electronic cigarette use: a systematic review of the literature

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