Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Jan 20, 2022
Date Accepted: Dec 16, 2022
Utilizing social media data to investigate public perceptions of medical cannabis: a narrative review
ABSTRACT
Background:
Online user-generated data is increasingly used for monitoring public health concerns and patterns using a variety of research methods.
Objective:
The objective of this paper is to provide a narrative review of the outcomes of studies which have utilized user-generated text as a data source to study medicinal cannabis (cannabis as a medicine).
Methods:
The inclusion criteria for this review were primary research studies and reviews that reported on the analysis of online user-generated content on cannabis as medicine. Medline, Scopus, Web of Science, and Embase databases were searched from inception until May 2021.
Results:
Thirty-eight studies published in English were included. This review found that consumers value their ability to exchange experiences online and tend to rely on online information sources. Cannabis discussions portrayed the substance as a safe and natural medicine to help with many health conditions, including cancer, sleep disorder, chronic pain, opioid use disorder, headache, asthma, bowel disease, anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. These discussions provide a rich resource for researchers to investigate medicinal cannabis-related consumer sentiment and experiences, including the opportunity to monitor cannabis effects and adverse events, provided the anecdotal and often biased nature of the information is properly accounted for.
Conclusions:
The extensive online presence of the cannabis industry coupled with the conversational nature of social media discourse results in rich but biased information that is often not well supported by scientific evidence. This review discusses the challenge facing health governance agencies and professionals to make use of online resources to both learn from medicinal cannabis users and to provide factual, timely, and reliable evidence-based health information to consumers.
Citation
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.