A study on dual topic models and bayesian topic model inference

Rugeles, Daniel

doi:10.32657/10356/145117

Cited by 2 publications

References 68 publications

(115 reference statements)

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Difficulty Regulating Social Media Content of Age-Restricted Products: Comparing JUUL’s Official Twitter Timeline and Social Media Content About JUUL

Valdez¹,

Unger²

2021

JMIR Infodemiology

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Background In 2018, JUUL Labs Inc, a popular e-cigarette manufacturer, announced it would substantially limit its social media presence in compliance with the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) call to curb underage e-cigarette use. However, shortly after the announcement, a series of JUUL-related hashtags emerged on various social media platforms, calling the effectiveness of the FDA’s regulations into question. Objective The purpose of this study is to determine whether hashtags remain a common venue to market age-restricted products on social media. Methods We used Twitter’s standard application programming interface to download the 3200 most-recent tweets originating from JUUL Labs Inc’s official Twitter Account (@JUULVapor), and a series of tweets (n=28,989) from other Twitter users containing either #JUUL or mentioned JUUL in the tweet text. We ran exploratory (10×10) and iterative Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic models to compare @JUULVapor’s content versus our hashtag corpus. We qualitatively deliberated topic meanings and substantiated our interpretations with tweets from either corpus. Results The topic models generated for @JUULVapor’s timeline seemingly alluded to compliance with the FDA’s call to prohibit marketing of age-restricted products on social media. However, the topic models generated for the hashtag corpus of tweets from other Twitter users contained several references to flavors, vaping paraphernalia, and illicit drugs, which may be appealing to younger audiences. Conclusions Our findings underscore the complicated nature of social media regulation. Although JUUL Labs Inc seemingly complied with the FDA to limit its social media presence, JUUL and other e-cigarette manufacturers are still discussed openly in social media spaces. Much discourse about JUUL and e-cigarettes is spread via hashtags, which allow messages to reach a wide audience quickly. This suggests that social media regulations on manufacturers cannot prevent e-cigarette users, influencers, or marketers from spreading information about e-cigarette attributes that appeal to the youth, such as flavors. Stricter protocols are needed to regulate discourse about age-restricted products on social media.

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Difficulty Regulating Social Media Content of Age-Restricted Products: Comparing JUUL’s Official Twitter Timeline and Social Media Content About JUUL

Valdez¹,

Unger²

2021

JMIR Infodemiology

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Difficulty Regulating Social Media Content of Age-Restricted Products: Comparing JUUL’s Official Twitter Timeline and Social Media Content About JUUL (Preprint)

Valdez¹,

Unger²

2021

Preprint

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BACKGROUND In 2018, JUUL Labs Inc, a popular e-cigarette manufacturer, announced it would substantially limit its social media presence in compliance with the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) call to curb underage e-cigarette use. However, shortly after the announcement, a series of JUUL-related hashtags emerged on various social media platforms, calling the effectiveness of the FDA’s regulations into question. OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study is to show that hashtags remain a common venue to market age-restricted products on social media. METHODS We used Twitter’s standard Application Programming Interface (API) to download the 3200 most-recent tweets originating from JUUL Labs Inc.’s official Twitter Account (@JUULVapor), and a series of tweets containing one, or more, of the following hashtags (#ecig, #vape, #JUUL). We ran two Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic models comparing @JUULVapor’s content versus our hashtag corpus. We qualitatively deliberated topic meanings and substantiated our interpretations with tweets from either corpus. RESULTS The topic model generated for @JUULVapor’s timeline seemingly alluded to compliance with the FDA’s call to prohibit marketing of age-restricted products on social media. However, the topic model generated for the hashtag corpus contained several references to flavors, vaping paraphernalia, and illicit drugs which may be appealing to younger audiences. CONCLUSIONS Our findings underscore the complicated nature of social media regulation. Although JUUL Labs Inc. seemingly complied with the FDA to limit its social media presence, JUUL and other e-cigarette manufacturers are still discussed openly in social media spaces. Much discourse about JUUL and e-cigarettes is spread via hashtags, which allow messages to reach a wide audience quickly. This suggests social media regulations on manufacturers are, by themselves, in effective. Stricter protocols are needed to regulate discourse about age-restricted products on social media.

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A study on dual topic models and bayesian topic model inference

Abstract: A*STAR. They have helped me improve my research skills by instructing me on how to apply critical thinking to produce state of the art contributions and how to scientifically conduct experiments. It is my pleasure to study and research under their supervision.

Cited by 2 publications

References 68 publications

Difficulty Regulating Social Media Content of Age-Restricted Products: Comparing JUUL’s Official Twitter Timeline and Social Media Content About JUUL

Difficulty Regulating Social Media Content of Age-Restricted Products: Comparing JUUL’s Official Twitter Timeline and Social Media Content About JUUL

Difficulty Regulating Social Media Content of Age-Restricted Products: Comparing JUUL’s Official Twitter Timeline and Social Media Content About JUUL (Preprint)

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