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

BACKGROUND: Twitter 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. OBJECTIVES: The intent of the study was to assess the content of “tweets” and the demographics of followers of a popular pro-marijuana Twitter handle (@stillblazingtho). METHODS: We 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. RESULTS: A 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. CONCLUSIONS: Young 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

A content analysis of vaping advertisements on Twitter, November 2014

INTRODUCTION: Vaping has increased in popularity, and the potential harms and benefits are largely unknown. Vaping-related advertising is expected to grow as the vaping industry grows; people are exposed primarily to vaping advertisements on the Internet, and Twitter is an especially popular social medium among young people. The primary objective of our study was to describe the characteristics of vaping-related advertisements on Twitter. METHODS: We collected data on 403,079 English-language tweets that appeared during November 2014 and contained vaping-related keywords. Using crowdsourcing services, we identified vaping-related advertisements in a random sample of 5,000 tweets. The advertisement tweets were qualitatively coded for popular marketing tactics by our research team. We also inferred the demographic characteristics of followers of 4 Twitter handles that advertised various novel vape products. RESULTS: The random sample of 5,000 vaping-related tweets included 1,156 (23%) advertisement tweets that were further analyzed. Vape pens were advertised in nearly half of the advertisement tweets (47%), followed by e-juice (21%), which commonly mentioned flavors (42%). Coupons or price discounts were frequently observed (32%); only 3% of tweets mentioned vaping as a way to quit smoking or as an alternative to smoking. One handle had a disproportionately high percentage of racial/ethnic minority followers. CONCLUSION: Vaping poses a threat to smoking prevention progress, and it is important for those in tobacco control to understand and counter the tactics used by vaping companies to entice their consumers, especially on social media where young people can easily view the content

“I just want to be skinny.”: A content analysis of tweets expressing eating disorder symptoms

There is increasing concern about online communities that promote eating disorder (ED) behaviors through messages and/or images that encourage a “thin ideal” (i.e., promotion of thinness as attractive) and harmful weight loss/weight control practices. The purpose of this paper is to assess the content of body image and ED-related content on Twitter and provide a deeper understanding of EDs that may be used for future studies and online-based interventions. Tweets containing ED or body image-related keywords were collected from January 1-January 31, 2015 (N = 28,642). A random sample (n = 3000) was assessed for expressions of behaviors that align with subscales of the Eating Disorder Examination (EDE) 16.0. Demographic characteristics were inferred using a social media analytics company. The comprehensive research that we conducted indicated that 2,584 of the 3,000 tweets were ED-related; 65% expressed a preoccupation with body shape, 13% displayed issues related to food/eating/calories, and 4% expressed placing a high level of importance on body weight. Most tweets were sent by girls (90%) who were ≤19 years old (77%). Our findings stress a need to better understand if and how ED-related content on social media can be used for targeting prevention and intervention messages towards those who are in-need and could potentially benefit from these efforts.</div

Self-unloading, reusable, lunar lander project

In the early 21st century, NASA will return to the Moon and establish a permanent base. To achieve this goal safely and economically, B&T Engineering has designed an unmanned, reusable, self-unloading lunar lander. The lander is designed to deliver 15,000 kg payloads from an orbit transfer vehicle (OTV) in a low lunar polar orbit and an altitude of 200 km to any location on the lunar surface

Hookah-related Twitter chatter: A content analysis

INTRODUCTION: Hookah smoking is becoming increasingly popular among young adults and is often perceived as less harmful than cigarette use. Prior studies show that it is common for youth and young adults to network about substance use behaviors on social media. Social media messages about hookah could influence its use among young people. We explored normalization or discouragement of hookah smoking, and other common messages about hookah on Twitter. METHODS: From the full stream of tweets posted on Twitter from April 12, 2014, to May 10, 2014 (approximately 14.5 billion tweets), all tweets containing the terms hookah, hooka, shisha, or sheesha were collected (n = 358,523). The hookah tweets from Twitter users (tweeters) with high influence and followers were identified (n = 39,824) and a random sample of 5,000 tweets was taken (13% of tweets with high influence and followers). The sample of tweets was qualitatively coded for normalization (ie, makes hookah smoking seem common and normal or portrays positive experiences with smoking hookah) or discouragement of hookah smoking, and other common themes using crowdsourcing. RESULTS: Approximately 87% of the sample of tweets normalized hookah use, and 7% were against hookah or discouraged its use. Nearly half (46%) of tweets that normalized hookah indicated that the tweeter was smoking hookah or wanted to smoke hookah, and 19% were advertisements/promotions for hookah bars or products. CONCLUSION: Educational campaigns about health harms from hookah use and policy changes regarding smoke-free air laws and tobacco advertising on the Internet may be useful to help offset the influence of pro-hookah messages seen on social media

Exploring social media recruitment strategies and preliminary acceptability of an mHealth tool for teens with eating disorders

(1) Background: The current study leveraged social media to connect with teens with EDs to identify population specific characteristics and to gather feedback on an mHealth intervention. (2) Methods: We recruited teens with EDs from social media in two phases: (1) Discovery Group, (2) Testing Group. The Discovery Group

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

High-Impact Practices Support Second-Year Students' Academic Success, Engagement and Persistence

This study examined the perceptions of ten second-year students who participated in the Success Program at Midwestern four-year university. As part of the Success Program, these participants also participated in several high impact practices (HIPs) throughout their first year. Participants in this study shared their perceptions on the benefits of HIPs, how HIPs improved their academic success and engagement, making them want to persist, and any barriers they experienced, prohibiting their participation in HIPs. Findings indicated students perceived HIPs (a) enhanced academic success, (b) increased community engagement, (c) improved the likelihood of their persistence, and (d) that targeted HIPs should be offered during their second year. Students also perceived a time and other obligations were barriers to participating in HIPs. Finding from this study contribute to the field of research targeting second-year students. It raises awareness for the need of targeted support to second-year students as they navigate through the sophomore slump

Experiences of Spanish Speaking Counseling Students: Implications for the Profession

Due to the rise of predominate Spanish-speaking individuals in the United States, there is an increased need to provide bilingual counseling services. Understanding the experiences of bilingual counseling students is imperative for the training of bilingual counselors and overall service delivery. The purpose of this qualitative study was to understand the experiences of students who provide counseling services in Spanish yet trained in an English-language counselor education program. This study attempted to expand and specify the unique challenges and needs of this student counselor population. Analyses revealed that there are some unique challenges in bilingual counseling service delivery. Four overarching themes emerged: difficulty with translation, change in self-efficacy, differences in language, and lack of resources. Implications for counselor education programs and best practices for training Spanish-speaking counselors are discussed