JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

As a popular social networking platform for sharing short videos, TikTok has been widely used for sharing electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) or vaping-related videos, especially among the youth.

Objective:

We aimed to characterize the e-cigarette/vaping-related videos and their user engagement on TikTok through descriptive analysis.

Methods:

From TikTok, 500 short videos, posted between October 4, 2018 and February 27, 2021, were collected using e-cigarette/vaping-related hashtags. Two human coders independently hand-coded the video category and the attitude towards vaping (pro-vaping or anti-vaping) for 417 vaping-related videos. The user engagement measures (such as the comment count, like count, and share count) for each video category were compared within pro-vaping and anti-vaping groups. The user accounts posting these videos were also characterized.

Results:

Among 417 vaping-related TikTok videos, 387 (92.8%) were pro-vaping and 30 (7.2%) were anti-vaping videos. Among pro-vaping TikTok videos, the most popular category is Vaping trick (107 videos, 27.65%), followed by Advertisement (85 videos, 21.95%), Customization (75 videos, 19.38%), TikTok trend (70 videos, 18.09%), Others (44 videos, 11.37%), and Education (6 videos, 1.55%). By comparison, videos showing the TikTok trend had significantly higher user engagement (like count/video) than other pro-vaping videos. Anti-vaping videos included 15 videos (50.00%) showing the TikTok trend, 10 videos (33.33%) on Education, and 5 videos (16.67%) about Others. Videos with Education have a significantly lower number of likes than other anti-vaping videos. Most TikTok users posting vaping-related videos are personal accounts (119/203, 58.62%).

Conclusions:

Vaping-related TikTok videos are dominated by pro-vaping videos focusing on vaping tricks, advertisement, customization, and TikTok trend. The TikTok trend has higher user engagement than other categories. Our findings provide important information on vaping-related videos shared on TikTok and their user engagement levels, which might provide valuable guidance on future policy-making such as possible restrictions on pro-vaping video posting on TikTok.