Viewer Reactions to EVALI Storylines on Popular Medical Dramas: A Thematic Analysis of Twitter Messages

J Health Commun. 2023 May 4;28(5):282-291. doi: 10.1080/10810730.2023.2201814. Epub 2023 Apr 14.

Abstract

Previous research has found an association between awareness of e-cigarette, or vaping, product-use associated lung injury (EVALI) and lower intention to use e-cigarettes among young people. This study utilized Twitter data to evaluate if the January 2020 depiction of EVALI on New Amsterdam, Chicago Med, and Grey's Anatomy-three popular primetime medical dramas-could be a potential innovative avenue to raise awareness of EVALI. We obtained tweets containing e-cigarette-related search strings from 1/21/2020 to 02/18/2020 and filtered these with storyline-specific keywords, resulting in 1,493 tweets for qualitative coding by two trained human coders. Content codes were informed by prior research, theories of narrative influence, and e-cigarette related outcomes. Of 641 (42.9%) relevant tweets, the most frequent content codes were perceived realism (n = 292, 45.6%) and negative response (n = 264, 41.2%). A common theme among these tweets was that storylines were unrealistic because none of the characters with EVALI used THC-containing products. Approximately 12% of tweets (n = 78) mentioned e-cigarette knowledge and 28 (4.4%) mentioned behavior, including quitting e-cigarettes because of viewing the storylines. Implications for health communication research utilizing social media data and maximizing the achievement of positive health-related outcomes for storylines depicting current health topics are discussed.

Publication types

  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • Adolescent
  • Drama*
  • Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems*
  • Humans
  • Lung Injury*
  • Social Media*
  • Vaping* / adverse effects