JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

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 being used to share personal experiences and opinion, provides an ideal data source to study the public perception of snus.

Objective:

This study aimed to examine public perceptions and discussions of snus on Twitter.

Methods:

Twitter posts (tweets) about snus were collected through Twitter streaming API from March 11th, 2021 to February 26th, 2022. Temporal analysis was conducted to examine the change in number of snus-related tweets over time. Sentiment analysis was conducted to examine the sentiment 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:

Sentiment analysis showed that the proportion of snus-related tweets with positive sentiment was significantly higher than the proportion of negative sentiment tweets (37.32% vs. 26.60%, P-value < 0.05). Topic modeling revealed that positive tweets focused on snus’s harm reduction and 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 public perception of snus and popular snus-related topics discussed on Twitter, which provided a guide for policymakers with future formulation and adjustment of tobacco regulation policy.