Pro- and anti-opioid use posts on Reddit: A Content Analysis (Preprint)

Abstract

BACKGROUND Opioid use is a leading cause of injury-related deaths in the United States. Past studies have shown that analyzing opioid-related social media has the potential to reveal patterns of opioid abuse offline. OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study is to examine how users are posting about pro and anti- opioid use on Reddit. METHODS There were 100 posts selected from the Reddit online community r/Opioids. The comments and upvotes for each of the posts were collected. The posts were also run through Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count software with 16 variables. RESULTS There were on average more comments for anti- opioid posts (M= 9.06 , SD =12.22) than for the average number of comments for pro- opioid posts (M=14.88, SD= 17.89) t(81)= (2.79), p = 0.0065 < 0.05. There were on average more upvotes for anti- opioid posts (M= 1.58 , SD =1.98) than for the average number of comments for pro- opioid posts (M= 41.67, SD= 16.36), t(81)= (16.84), p = 0.0001. For LIWC variable Focus Present was found to be more significant in anti- opioid posts (M= 11.19, SD =5.79) than for pro- opioid posts (M= 15.58, SD=9.81), t(98)= (2.82), p =.0207. Focus future was also found to be more significant in anti- opioid posts (M= 1.63 , SD =1.86) than for pro- opioid posts (M=1.63, SD= 1.86), t(98)= (2.84), p = .0244. CONCLUSIONS Although there were on average more pro-opioid use posts in the online community, there seemed to be more engagement and support for the anti-opioid use posts. For the LIWC variables that were analyzed, Focus Present and Focus Future were found to be significant. This suggests that some users may be more likely to use vocabulary pertaining to future and present situations while looking at the health risks of opioids.