How is Vaping Framed on Online Knowledge Dissemination Platforms?

TL;DR

This study analyzes how vaping is portrayed across various online platforms using NLP techniques, revealing differences in framing that influence public perceptions and providing recommendations for stakeholders.

Contribution

It offers a comprehensive NLP-based analysis of vaping discourse across multiple platforms, highlighting platform-specific framing and its implications.

Findings

Medium, Quora, and Stack Exchange support smoking-to-vaping transition.

Reddit and wikiHow focus on vaping hobbies and may promote youth vaping.

Wikipedia may overstate vaping harms, discouraging smokers.

Abstract

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.