Is “YouTube” telling or selling you something? Tobacco content on the YouTube video-sharing website: Table 1

Portrayal of Smokeless Tobacco in YouTube Videos

“…This study also found that ST YouTube videos largely portray the use of ST as positive or socially acceptable. These findings are in line with previous studies, which found that smoking-related YouTube videos were more prevalent than antismoking videos (Forsyth & Malone, 2010;Freeman & Chapman, 2007). Pro-ST YouTube videos were also viewed more frequently and rated much more favorably than anti-ST videos, suggesting that viewers enjoy and prefer to watch pro-ST videos.…”

“…Previous studies on smoking imagery on YouTube have found that, although both pro-and antitobacco videos are present on YouTube, protobacco videos were more prevalent (Forsyth & Malone, 2010;Freeman & Chapman, 2007). These studies also found that there were a wide variety of genres of videos, including professionally produced cigarette advertisements and antismoking videos.…”

“…Seidenberg, Rees, and Connolly (2010) noted that Swedish Match, a major international ST company, had several promotional videos posted on YouTube, all of which have since been removed by the user. Other studies of smoking-related YouTube videos have identified several videos that may be covert tobacco advertising (Elkin et al, 2010;Freeman & Chapman, 2007). Although YouTube does censor videos that violate its "community guidelines," it does not proactively restrict videos.…”

Portrayal of Electronic Cigarettes on YouTube

“…Second, we assessed the portrayal of e-cigarette videos by investigating the overall attitude to e-cigarettes and documenting promotional and warning content for each video. This study found the vast majority of information on YouTube about e-cigarettes promoted their use and depicted the use of e-cigarettes as socially acceptable, which is agreement with previous studies of tobacco related videos on YouTube [9,[12][13][14][15]17,[19][20][21]. The top 3 most prevalent genres of videos were advertisement videos produced by e-cigarette companies, user sharing videos produced by consumers and product review videos produced by vendors.…”

Adolescents’ exposure to tobacco and alcohol content in YouTube music videos

“…In 2014 the site attracted more than 1 billion unique users 38, approximately five times more than in 2006 39. In April 2011 music videos accounted for 30% of the top 10 most viewed channels 37, and in 2007 YouTube videos were reported qualitatively to contain extensive and easily accessible tobacco imagery 40. To quantify contemporary exposure we have therefore analysed alcohol and tobacco content in YouTube music videos of the 110 most popular songs in UK music charts during the 12‐week period from 3 November to 19 January 2014.…”