Tobacco control policies discussed on social media: a scoping review

Objective: To describe the scope of published literature about tobacco-related policy discussions from social media data and discuss implications for tobacco control policy and future research.

Data sources: PubMed, Medline, CINAHL and Web of Science were searched on 20 November 2023, using search terms for social media, tobacco, and policy. The search was limited from 2005 to 2023.

Study selection: After removing duplicates, 2 authors reviewed 1118 articles. Those found to be irrelevant based on title (1078) and abstract (18) review were removed.

Data extraction: Data included study descriptions (eg, policy discussed, social media platform and number of posts), study characteristics (eg, methodology, sentiment analysis (propolicy, antipolicy, neutral policy and unclear policy)), and major and additional findings.

Data synthesis: Of the 22 articles, most examined discussions about USA (n=18) federal regulations (n=17) via human annotation (n=18), using Twitter (X; n=20). Of the 14 papers that discussed sentiment, 4 collected data at different time points; frequency of positive posts typically decreased after policy announcements. Policies discussed in articles included flavour restrictions; USA ban of Puff Bar; Tobacco 21; tobacco taxes; e-cigarette regulation; UK's standardised packaging; product authorisation; regulating e-cigarettes as a medical product; WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control regulatory actions; Australia's import restrictions on vaping products and smoke-free and tobacco-free college campus policies.

Conclusions: Social media data can be leveraged to examine timely discourse regarding tobacco control policies. Identified methods of circumventing proposed tobacco control laws and enforcement challenges should be considered by regulatory agencies to close policy loopholes and inform implementation practices.