Characterizing the Followers and Tweets of a Marijuana-Focused Twitter Handle

Abstract

BackgroundTwitter is a popular social media forum for sharing personal experiences, interests, and opinions. An improved understanding of the discourse on Twitter that encourages marijuana use can be helpful for tailoring and targeting online and offline prevention messages.ObjectivesThe intent of the study was to assess the content of “tweets” and the demographics of followers of a popular pro-marijuana Twitter handle (@stillblazingtho).MethodsWe assessed the sentiment and content of tweets (sent from May 1 to December 31, 2013), as well as the demographics of consumers that follow a popular pro-marijuana Twitter handle (approximately 1,000,000 followers) using Twitter analytics from Demographics Pro. This analytics company estimates demographic characteristics based on Twitter behavior/usage, relying on multiple data signals from networks, consumption, and language and requires confidence of 95% or above to make an estimate of a single demographic characteristic.ResultsA total of 2590 tweets were sent from @stillblazingtho during the 8-month period and 305 (11.78%) replies to another Twitter user were excluded for qualitative analysis. Of the remaining 2285 tweets, 1875 (82.06%) were positive about marijuana, 403 (17.64%) were neutral, and 7 (0.31%) appeared negative about marijuana. Approximately 1101 (58.72%) of the positive marijuana tweets were perceived as jokes or humorous, 340 (18.13%) implied that marijuana helps you to feel good or relax, 294 (15.68%) mentioned routine, frequent, or heavy use, 193 (10.29%) mentioned blunts, marijuana edibles, or paraphernalia (eg, bongs, vaporizers), and 186 (9.92%) mentioned other risky health behaviors (eg, tobacco, alcohol, other drugs, sex). The majority (699,103/959,143; 72.89%) of @stillblazingtho followers were 19 years old or younger. Among people ages 17 to 19 years, @stillblazingtho was in the top 10% of all Twitter handles followed. More followers of @stillblazingtho in the United States were African American (323,107/759,407; 42.55%) or Hispanic (90,732/759,407; 11.95%) than the Twitter median average (African American 22.4%, inter-quartile ratio [IQR] 5.1-62.5%; Hispanic 5.4%, IQR 3.0-10.8%) and among Hispanics, @stillblazingtho was in the top 30% of all Twitter handles followed.ConclusionsYoung people are especially responsive to social media influences and often establish substance use patterns during this phase of development. Our findings underscore the need for surveillance efforts to monitor the pro-marijuana content reaching young people on Twitter.

Systematic review of surveillance by social media platforms for illicit drug use

“…[56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68] Only one study used a qualitative study design, 69 the others used content analysis of data from SM.…”

“…69 Many participants were college students between 17 and 19 years old who followed musicians, with 43% African American. 56 Illicit drugs used A range of illicit drugs were discussed, but the most frequently reported were alcohol, marijuana, tobacco and prescription drugs. Two studies analyzed the illicit use of any prescription drug, and others focused on particular prescription drugs like opioids or Adderall.…”

“…SM users ranged from school-aged children to young adults, with the majority reported between ages 17 and 24 years. [56][57][58][59][60] One study reported the youngest participant was 11 years of age.69 Many participants were college students between 17 and 19 years old who followed musicians, with 43% African American. …”

“…However, 57% of the studies (n = 8) lacked demographic filters and indicators due to privacy restrictions, presenting issues of sampling bias and limiting generalizability. 56,57,[61][62][63][64]67,68 Convenient small samples also limited generalizability. 60,68,69 Hanson et al 65 noted their inability to observe actual behavior made it impossible to determine which public tweets corresponded with actual illicit drug use.…”

“…Relatively certain that I'm saying things i wont [sic] remember in the morning.' 56,65 ( Table 2).More timely and adequate findings on illicit drug use from SM could help health professionals design early and effective programs to address substance use/abuse. According to Butler et al 61 , examining chatter on message boards could lead to a new surveillance model.…”