Understanding cannabis information on social media: Examining tweets from verified, regular, and suspended users

Li, Menghang; Kakani, Nischal; Li, Chuqin; Park, Albert

doi:10.1109/ichi48887.2020.9374387

Cited by 5 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…However, a group of papers [48,50,53,57,61,64–66,70–74] distinguished themselves by extending existing models by adding increasingly granular layers of input. This included not only text information but also images, the timing of posts and the relationships between them.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The influencer and social media culture era brings new challenges as the expansion of new products within the boundaries of legal concentrations or marketised as 'safe' add to the complexity of an existing legal grey area. The blurriness of the law and its international disparities are likely to afford greater opportunities for sellers to market their goods in new spaces, such as social media or other apps [73,85]. This echoes suggestions that anonymous location-based apps may flourish, facilitating drug commercialisation [75].…”

Section: Conclusion and Future Trendsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Network analysis revealed that most drug users shared common interests based on the accounts they followed and that they formed a more centralised community than non-drug users [36]. Furthermore, Li et al [73] and Majmundar et al [74] examined the intersections between types of users (verified or suspended Twitter accounts) and topics (posts including cannabis, e-cigarettes and tobacco). Suspended Twitter accounts mostly posted advertisements and promotions of illicit drugs but coincided with regular users in the topic of recreational usage of drugs: cannabis retail constituted 20.6% of the five most discussed topics for regular users [54].…”

Section: Policy Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Understanding and preventing the advertisement and sale of illicit drugs to young people through social media: A multidisciplinary scoping review

Fuller,

Vasek,

Mariconti

et al. 2023

Drug and Alcohol Review

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IssuesThe sale of illicit drugs online has expanded to mainstream social media apps. These platforms provide access to a wide audience, especially children and adolescents. Research is in its infancy and scattered due to the multidisciplinary aspects of the phenomena.ApproachWe present a multidisciplinary systematic scoping review on the advertisement and sale of illicit drugs to young people. Peer‐reviewed studies written in English, Spanish and French were searched for the period 2015 to 2022. We extracted data on users, drugs studied, rate of posts, terminology used and study methodology.Key FindingsA total of 56 peer‐reviewed papers were included. The analysis of these highlights the variety of drugs advertised and platforms used to do so. Various methodological designs were considered. Approaches to detecting illicit content were the focus of many studies as algorithms move from detecting drug‐related keywords to drug selling behaviour. We found that on average, for the studies reviewed, 13 in 100 social media posts advertise illicit drugs. However, popular platforms used by adolescents are rarely studied.ImplicationsPromotional content is increasing in sophistication to appeal to young people, shifting towards healthy, glamourous and seemingly legal depictions of drugs. Greater inter‐disciplinary collaboration between computational and qualitative approaches are needed to comprehensively study the sale and advertisement of illegal drugs on social media across different platforms. This requires coordinated action from researchers, policy makers and service providers.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Conclusion and Future Trendsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Policy Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Understanding and preventing the advertisement and sale of illicit drugs to young people through social media: A multidisciplinary scoping review

Fuller,

Vasek,

Mariconti

et al. 2023

Drug and Alcohol Review

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show abstract

“…For example, a study on veterans use of cannabis found that cannabis is used to self-medicate a number of health issues, including Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), anxiety and sleep disorder [94]. Seven of the studies used Twitter as a data source [43,73,78,87,96,98,99], one examined the content of YouTube videos about cannabis [100], one investigated online self-help forums [88] and another used Reddit data [94].…”

Section: Research Themesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social media discourse and internet search queries on cannabis as a medicine: A systematic scoping review

Hallinan

Habibabadi²,

Conway³

et al. 2023

PLoS ONE

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The use of cannabis for medicinal purposes has increased globally over the past decade since patient access to medicinal cannabis has been legislated across jurisdictions in Europe, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, and Australia. Yet, evidence relating to the effect of medical cannabis on the management of symptoms for a suite of conditions is only just emerging. Although there is considerable engagement from many stakeholders to add to the evidence base through randomized controlled trials, many gaps in the literature remain. Data from real-world and patient reported sources can provide opportunities to address this evidence deficit. This real-world data can be captured from a variety of sources such as found in routinely collected health care and health services records that include but are not limited to patient generated data from medical, administrative and claims data, patient reported data from surveys, wearable trackers, patient registries, and social media. In this systematic scoping review, we seek to understand the utility of online user generated text into the use of cannabis as a medicine. In this scoping review, we aimed to systematically search published literature to examine the extent, range, and nature of research that utilises user-generated content to examine to cannabis as a medicine. The objective of this methodological review is to synthesise primary research that uses social media discourse and internet search engine queries to answer the following questions: (i) In what way, is online user-generated text used as a data source in the investigation of cannabis as a medicine? (ii) What are the aims, data sources, methods, and research themes of studies using online user-generated text to discuss the medicinal use of cannabis. We conducted a manual search of primary research studies which used online user-generated text as a data source using the MEDLINE, Embase, Web of Science, and Scopus databases in October 2022. Editorials, letters, commentaries, surveys, protocols, and book chapters were excluded from the review. Forty-two studies were included in this review, twenty-two studies used manually labelled data, four studies used existing meta-data (Google trends/geo-location data), two studies used data that was manually coded using crowdsourcing services, and two used automated coding supplied by a social media analytics company, fifteen used computational methods for annotating data. Our review reflects a growing interest in the use of user-generated content for public health surveillance. It also demonstrates the need for the development of a systematic approach for evaluating the quality of social media studies and highlights the utility of automatic processing and computational methods (machine learning technologies) for large social media datasets. This systematic scoping review has shown that user-generated content as a data source for studying cannabis as a medicine provides another means to understand how cannabis is perceived and used in the community. As such, it provides another potential ‘tool’ with which to engage in pharmacovigilance of, not only cannabis as a medicine, but also other novel therapeutics as they enter the market.

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“…For example, a study on veterans use of cannabis found that cannabis is used to self-medicate a number of health issues, including Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), anxiety and sleep disorder (91). Seven of the studies used Twitter as a data source (40,70,75,84,93,95,96) , one examined the content of YouTube videos about cannabis (97), one investigated online self-help forums (85) and another used Reddit data (91). To explore Veterans' Reddit discussions regarding their cannabis use.…”

Section: General Cannabis-relatedmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social media discourse and internet search queries on cannabis as a medicine: A systematic scoping review

Habibabadi

Bonomo

Conway

et al. 2022

Preprint

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ObjectiveTo systematically review the current published literature that uses social media data and internet search engine queries to identify emerging themes on the use of cannabis as a medicine. In this study, the term cannabis as a medicine refers to the use of cannabis with therapeutic intent and includes prescribed cannabis, over-the-counter cannabis, and non-prescribed cannabis used specifically for self-medication (not for recreational purposes).Materials and MethodsFor this systematic review, Medline, Scopus, Web of Science and Embase databases were searched for peer reviewed studies published in English between January 2010 and March 2022. All study types that examined social media data and cannabis as a medicine were included in the review.ResultsForty studies were included in this review. 21 studies used manually labeled data, 4 studies used existing meta-data, 2 studies used data from social media analytics companies and 13 used computational methods for annotating data. More than half of the studies 22/40 (55%), were published in the last three years. The incidental use of cannabis as a medicine was found in eleven studies that were focused on more general health-related issues, rather than on medicinal cannabis only.ConclusionOur systematic review has revealed the growing interest in analyzing user-generated content for studying cannabis as a medicine. This review has also highlighted the need for studies into cannabis use for specific health conditions and for automatic processing of larger datasets using computational methods (machine learning technologies).

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Understanding cannabis information on social media: Examining tweets from verified, regular, and suspended users

Cited by 5 publications

References 31 publications

Understanding and preventing the advertisement and sale of illicit drugs to young people through social media: A multidisciplinary scoping review

Understanding and preventing the advertisement and sale of illicit drugs to young people through social media: A multidisciplinary scoping review

Social media discourse and internet search queries on cannabis as a medicine: A systematic scoping review

Social media discourse and internet search queries on cannabis as a medicine: A systematic scoping review

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