We analyze 1,888 articles and 1,119,453 vaping posts to study how vaping is
framed across multiple knowledge dissemination platforms (Wikipedia, Quora,
Medium, Reddit, Stack Exchange, wikiHow). We use various NLP techniques to
understand these differences. For example, n-grams, emotion recognition, and
question answering results indicate that Medium, Quora, and Stack Exchange are
appropriate venues for those looking to transition from smoking to vaping.
Other platforms (Reddit, wikiHow) are more for vaping hobbyists and may not
sufficiently dissuade youth vaping. Conversely, Wikipedia may exaggerate vaping
harms, dissuading smokers from transitioning. A strength of our work is how the
different techniques we have applied validate each other. Based on our results,
we provide several recommendations. Stakeholders may utilize our findings to
design informational tools to reinforce or mitigate vaping (mis)perceptions
online.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2206.07765,
arXiv:2206.0902