Background: Electronic cigarette (e-cigarette) use has become more popular than cigarette smoking, especially among youth. Social media platforms, including YouTube, are a popular means of sharing information about e-cigarette use (vaping).
Objective: This study aimed to characterize the content and user engagement of e-cigarette-related YouTube videos.
Methods: The top 400 YouTube search videos related to e-cigarettes were collected in January 2020. Among them, 340 valid videos were classified into provaping, vaping-warning, and neutral categories by hand coding. Additionally, the content of e-cigarette videos and their user engagement (including average views and likes) were analyzed and compared.
Results: While provaping videos were dominant among e-cigarette-related YouTube videos from 2007 to 2017, vaping-warning videos started to emerge in 2013 and became dominant between 2018 and 2019. Compared to vaping-warning videos, provaping videos had higher average daily views (1077 vs 822) but lower average daily likes (12 vs 15). Among 161 provaping videos, videos on user demonstration (n=100, 62.11%) were dominant, and videos on comparison with smoking had the highest user engagement (2522 average daily views and 28 average daily likes). Conversely, among 141 vaping-warning videos, videos on potential health risks were the most popular topic (n=57, 40.42%) with the highest user engagement (1609 average daily views and 33 average daily likes).
Conclusions: YouTube was dominated by provaping videos, with the majority of videos on user demonstrations before 2018. The vaping-warning videos became dominant between 2018 and 2019, with videos on potential health risks being the most popular topic. This study provides updated surveillance on e-cigarette-related YouTube videos and some important guidance on associated social media regulations.
Keywords: YouTube; e-cigarette; electronic cigarettes; infodemiology; infoveillance; provaping; social listening; user engagement; vaping-warning.
©Zidian Xie, Xueting Wang, Yu Gu, Dongmei Li. Originally published in the Interactive Journal of Medical Research (https://www.i-jmr.org/), 06.07.2021.