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. 2020 May 21;15(5):e0233419.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0233419. eCollection 2020.

#toolittletoolate: JUUL-related content on Instagram before and after self-regulatory action

Lauren Czaplicki  1 , Shreya Tulsiani  1 , Ganna Kostygina  2 , Miao Feng  2 , Yoonsang Kim  2 , Siobhan N Perks  1 , Sherry Emery  2 , Barbara Schillo  1
Affiliations

#toolittletoolate: JUUL-related content on Instagram before and after self-regulatory action

Lauren Czaplicki et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Introduction: Digital e-cigarette marketing is largely unregulated and remains easily accessible to young people. The growing public concern around youth JUUL use and its viral presence on social media led the company to engage in several voluntary actions to remove and reduce JUUL-related content on Instagram in May 2018. The current study examined how JUUL-related Instagram content changed in the US following JUUL Labs' wave of voluntary actions in May 2018.

Methods: In 2019, we collected a total of 50,817 JUUL-relevant posts by 16,323 unique users on Instagram from March 1-May 15, 2018 (Phase 1) and May 16-November 11, 2018 (Phase II) using the application programming interface. We conducted a semantic network analysis to identify major topic clusters over time.

Results: Approximately 14,838 JUUL-related posts were made by 5,201 accounts in Phase I and 35,979 posts were made by 11,122 accounts in Phase II. Major content clusters remained unchanged over time-key topics were JUUL-related product characteristics and JUUL-communities; the general vape community; and cannabis-related behavior. Of note, cannabis-related content grew in Phase II, particularly use of the term CBD.

Conclusions: Our results reflect the limits of voluntary industry actions to reduce or change vaping-related content on social media. Rather, strong federal restriction on commercial tobacco marketing is the optimal pathway to reduce initial product marketing exposure among youth. These limits would make the emergence and viral contagion of brand-related social media content less likely and reduce its influence on youth behavior.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Trendline analysis of JUUL-related Instagram posts over time (March 1-November 11, 2018).
Fig 2
Fig 2
Network analysis of JUUL-related Instagram content (a) before and (b) following self-regulatory actions taken by JUUL Labs to limit social media presence. Colors are used to differentiate clusters of terms; the label font size corresponds to the frequency of occurrence of a term; edges/ties represent co-occurrence within three-term distance and width of the lines between terms is thinner or thicker based on the frequency of co-occurrence between the pair. Across Phases I and II, orange color corresponds to JUUL community-related content; blue color—vape community-related content.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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