Background: With the increasing popularity of snus, it is essential to understand the public perception of this oral tobacco product. Twitter-a popular social media platform that is being used to share personal experiences and opinions-provides an ideal data source for studying the public perception of snus.
Objective: This study aims to examine public perceptions and discussions of snus on Twitter.
Methods: Twitter posts (tweets) about snus were collected through the Twitter streaming application programming interface from March 11, 2021, to February 26, 2022. A temporal analysis was conducted to examine the change in number of snus-related tweets over time. A sentiment analysis was conducted to examine the sentiments of snus-related tweets. Topic modeling was applied to tweets to determine popular topics. Finally, a keyword search and hand-coding were used to understand the health symptoms mentioned in snus-related tweets.
Results: The sentiment analysis showed that the proportion of snus-related tweets with a positive sentiment was significantly higher than the proportion of negative sentiment tweets (4341/11,631, 37.32% vs 3094/11,631, 26.60%; P<.001). The topic modeling analysis revealed that positive tweets focused on snus's harm reduction and snus use being an alternative to smoking, while negative tweets focused on health concerns related to snus. Mouth and respiratory symptoms were the most mentioned health symptoms in snus-related tweets.
Conclusions: This study examined the public perception of snus and popular snus-related topics discussed on Twitter, thus providing a guide for policy makers with regard to the future formulation and adjustment of tobacco regulation policies.
Keywords: Twitter; sentiment; smokeless tobacco products; snus; topic modeling.
©Jiarui Chen, Siyu Xue, Zidian Xie, Dongmei Li. Originally published in JMIR Medical Informatics (https://medinform.jmir.org), 29.08.2022.