Is social media the way to empower patients to share their experiences of dental care?

Background: Social media present opportunities to understand patient experience and information needs. In this study, the authors use hypodontia as an example to explore social media use by dental patients and how this provides for understanding patient experience. Methods: The cross-sectional survey design involved systematic search of 6 social media online environments with hypodontia-related terms. The authors categorized records by using a coding system for user, type and theme of post, and target audience. The authors used a thematic framework approach to analyze qualitatively the word content of posts from people affected by hypodontia (nondentists). Results: The authors searched and identified 571 records and included 467 of them in their study. The authors analyzed the content of records from people affected by hypodontia (n = 176). Themes emerged about the experience of untreated hypodontia, treatment experience and outcomes, and decision making. Content analysis provided evidence about peer-to-peer communication, areas of information need, and desire for peer support. Conclusions: Social media communities have responded to the need for information exchange and peer support by the public. Analysis of communications helped identify a need for dissemination of understandable information to patients and improved dentist awareness of patient needs. Practical Implications: Clinicians should reassess understanding and information needs actively throughout treatment and identify support needs. Clinicians should refer patients to quality information sources and peer support groups

Tobacco industry use of flavourings to promote smokeless tobacco products

BackgroundWhile fruit, candy and alcohol characterising flavours are not allowed in cigarettes in the USA, other flavoured tobacco products such as smokeless tobacco (ST) continue to be sold. We investigated tobacco manufacturers' use of flavoured additives in ST products, the target audience(s) for flavoured products, and marketing strategies promoting products by emphasising their flavour.MethodsQualitative analysis of internal tobacco industry documents triangulated with data from national newspaper articles, trade press and internet.ResultsInternally, flavoured products have been consistently associated with young and inexperienced tobacco users. Internal studies confirmed that candy-like sweeter milder flavours (eg, mint, fruit) could increase appeal to starters by evoking a perception of mildness, blinding the strong tobacco taste and unpleasant mouth feel; or by modifying nicotine delivery by affecting product pH.DiscussionSimilar to cigarettes, flavoured ST is likely to encourage novices to start using tobacco, and regulations limiting or eliminating flavours in cigarettes should be extended to include flavoured ST products

A qualitative study of smokers’ responses to messages discouraging dual tobacco product use

Cigarette companies increasingly promote novel smokeless tobacco products to smokers, encouraging them to use smokeless tobacco in smoke-free environments. New messages may counteract this promotion. We developed 12 initial anti-smokeless message ideas and tested them in eight online focus groups with 75 US smokers. Those smokers who never tried smokeless tobacco were unaware of health risks of novel smokeless tobacco products, perceived scary messages as effective and acknowledged the addictive nature of nicotine. Smokers who had tried smokeless tobacco shared their personal (mainly negative) experiences with smokeless tobacco, were aware of health risks of novel smokeless tobacco products, but denied personal addiction, and misinterpreted or disregarded more threatening messages. Portraying women as smokeless tobacco users was perceived as unbelievable, and emphasizing the lack of appeal of novel smokeless tobacco products was perceived as encouraging continued smoking. Future ads should educate smokers about risks of novel smokeless tobacco products, but past users and never users may require different message strategies

The Influence of Provaping “Gatewatchers” on the Dissemination of COVID-19 Misinformation on Twitter: Analysis of Twitter Discourse Regarding Nicotine and the COVID-19 Pandemic

BackgroundThere is a lot of misinformation about a potential protective role of nicotine against COVID-19 spread on Twitter despite significant evidence to the contrary. We need to examine the role of vape advocates in the dissemination of such information through the lens of the gatewatching framework, which posits that top users can amplify and exert a disproportionate influence over the dissemination of certain content through curating, sharing, or, in the case of Twitter, retweeting it, serving more as a vector for misinformation rather than the source. ObjectiveThis research examines the Twitter discourse at the intersection of COVID-19 and tobacco (1) to identify the extent to which the most outspoken contributors to this conversation self-identify as vaping advocates and (2) to understand how and to what extent these vape advocates serve as gatewatchers through disseminating content about a therapeutic role of tobacco, nicotine, or vaping against COVID-19. MethodsTweets about tobacco, nicotine, or vaping and COVID-19 (N=1,420,271) posted during the first 9 months of the pandemic (January-September 2020) were identified from within a larger corpus of tobacco-related tweets using validated keyword filters. The top posters (ie, tweeters and retweeters) were identified and characterized, along with the most shared Uniform Resource Locators (URLs), most used hashtags, and the 1000 most retweeted posts. Finally, we examined the role of both top users and vape advocates in retweeting the most retweeted posts about the therapeutic role of nicotine, tobacco, or vaping against COVID-19. ResultsVape advocates comprised between 49.7% (n=81) of top 163 and 88% (n=22) of top 25 users discussing COVID-19 and tobacco on Twitter. Content about the ability of tobacco, nicotine, or vaping to treat or prevent COVID-19 was disseminated broadly, accounting for 22.5% (n=57) of the most shared URLs and 10% (n=107) of the most retweeted tweets. Finally, among top users, retweets comprised an average of 78.6% of the posts from vape advocates compared to 53.1% from others (z=3.34, P<.001). Vape advocates were also more likely to retweet the top tweeted posts about a therapeutic role of nicotine, with 63% (n=51) of vape advocates retweeting at least 1 post compared to 40.3% (n=29) of other top users (z=2.80, P=.01). ConclusionsProvaping users dominated discussions of tobacco use during the COVID-19 pandemic on Twitter and were instrumental in disseminating the most retweeted posts about a potential therapeutic role of tobacco use against the virus. Subsequent research is needed to better understand the extent of this influence and how to mitigate the influence of vape advocates over the broader narrative of tobacco regulation on Twitter