Consumer-Generated Discourse on Cannabis as a Medicine: Scoping Review of Techniques

Abstract

Background Medicinal cannabis is increasingly being used for a variety of physical and mental health conditions. Social media and web-based health platforms provide valuable, real-time, and cost-effective surveillance resources for gleaning insights regarding individuals who use cannabis for medicinal purposes. This is particularly important considering that the evidence for the optimal use of medicinal cannabis is still emerging. Despite the web-based marketing of medicinal cannabis to consumers, currently, there is no robust regulatory framework to measure clinical health benefits or individual experiences of adverse events. In a previous study, we conducted a systematic scoping review of studies that contained themes of the medicinal use of cannabis and used data from social media and search engine results. This study analyzed the methodological approaches and limitations of these studies. Objective We aimed to examine research approaches and study methodologies that use web-based user-generated text to study the use of cannabis as a medicine. Methods We searched MEDLINE, Scopus, Web of Science, and Embase databases for primary studies in the English language from January 1974 to April 2022. Studies were included if they aimed to understand web-based user-generated text related to health conditions where cannabis is used as a medicine or where health was mentioned in general cannabis-related conversations. Results We included 42 articles in this review. In these articles, Twitter was used 3 times more than other computer-generated sources, including Reddit, web-based forums, GoFundMe, YouTube, and Google Trends. Analytical methods included sentiment assessment, thematic analysis (manual and automatic), social network analysis, and geographic analysis. Conclusions This study is the first to review techniques used by research on consumer-generated text for understanding cannabis as a medicine. It is increasingly evident that consumer-generated data offer opportunities for a greater understanding of individual behavior and population health outcomes. However, research using these data has some limitations that include difficulties in establishing sample representativeness and a lack of methodological best practices. To address these limitations, deidentified annotated data sources should be made publicly available, researchers should determine the origins of posts (organizations, bots, power users, or ordinary individuals), and powerful analytical techniques should be used.

Using Social Media Data to Investigate Public Perceptions of Cannabis as a Medicine: Narrative Review

“…The scoping review focused on the research rigor and research motivations of the papers, and a separate technical review provided an overview of the techniques, limitations, and challenges faced by these studies [53]. This narrative review presents a summary of the findings of those studies to draw conclusions about the social media portrayal of cannabis as medicine, which predominantly speaks of its benefits, and to observe the use and influence of social media on consumers' perceptions of medicinal cannabis.…”

The Reddit cannabis subjective highness rating scale: Applying computational social science to explore psychological and environmental correlates of naturalistic cannabis use

“…I propose a musical experience—pack a bowl and click this link at a [ 5 ] and over .” (“Ents” is how people in r/trees refer to each other and is a reference to the tree-like creatures in the Lord of the Rings.) Another topic in this group was characterized by positive affect (“mellow positivity”): “ Have a listen with me to this perfect Saturday morning song to set a good mood , at a [ 6 ]. ” Two other topics were characterized by place or location (“smoke sessions” and “smoke spots”): “ Today’s backyard smoke spot by the river [ 4 ] ” .…”

“…Findings from the present analysis indicate that expression of affect or emotion was more likely to be positive than negative. Positive sentiment was similarly noted to be more common than negative sentiment in a systematic review that examined sentiment of consumer-generated cannabis content [ 6 ]. With respect to public health messaging, an implication of these findings of positive tone and no adverse effects topics is that social media perceptions of cannabis tend to be positive; overly negative or cautious messaging may not be seen as credible [ 48 , 49 ].…”

“…Reddit is a popular social media platform where user-generated text, link, and image content is submitted pseudonymously to topic-specific and volunteer-moderated discussion forums called subreddits. The subreddit r/trees is the largest cannabis community on the Reddit platform and the self-described, “go-to subreddit for anything and everything cannabis.” A systematic review of online “consumer-generated discourse” of cannabis identified extant research as primarily examining online data from Twitter, with less research from Reddit and other web-based forums [ 6 ]. The review notes that a limitation of much of this broad keyword-based social media and search-activity research is that mentions of cannabis may not represent actual use of cannabis.…”

Barriers to opioid use disorder treatment: A comparison of self-reported information from social media with barriers found in literature

“…Reddit was also described as an important source of substance use-related information during COVID-19, particularly because subscribers often shared their concerns and provided social support to each other ( 33 , 34 ). Studies on specific substances such as cannabis and fentanyl based on Reddit data have also been reported ( 35 , 36 ). No study, however, has focused specifically on identifying and characterizing barriers discussed on a social network such as Reddit.…”