{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,12]],"date-time":"2026-06-12T14:52:32Z","timestamp":1781275952752,"version":"3.54.1"},"reference-count":35,"publisher":"Public Library of Science (PLoS)","issue":"12","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2021,12,8]],"date-time":"2021-12-08T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1638921600000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/100000054","name":"National Cancer Institute","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["T32 CA 113710"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["T32 CA 113710"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/100000054","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":["www.plosone.org"],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["PLoS ONE"],"abstract":"<jats:sec id=\"sec001\">\n<jats:title>Background<\/jats:title>\n<jats:p>With the spread of COVID-19, significant concerns have been raised about the potential increased risk for electronic cigarette (e-cigarette) users for COVID-19 infection and related syndromes. Social media is an increasingly popular source for health information dissemination and discussion, and can affect health outcomes.<\/jats:p>\n<\/jats:sec>\n<jats:sec id=\"sec002\">\n<jats:title>Objective<\/jats:title>\n<jats:p>This study aims to identify the topics in the public vaping discussion in COVID-19\u2013related Twitter posts in order to get insight into public vaping-related perceptions, attitudes and concerns, and to discern possible misinformation and misconceptions around vaping in the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/jats:p>\n<\/jats:sec>\n<jats:sec id=\"sec003\">\n<jats:title>Methods<\/jats:title>\n<jats:p>Using the tweets ID database maintained by Georgia State University\u2019s Panacea Lab, we downloaded the tweets related to COVID-19 from March 11, 2020, when the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic, to February 12, 2021. We used R to analyze the tweets that contained a list of 79 keywords related to vaping. After removing duplicates and tweets created by faked accounts or bots, the final data set consisted of 11,337 unique tweets from 7,710 different users. We performed the latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) algorithm for topic modeling and carried out a sentiment analysis.<\/jats:p>\n<\/jats:sec>\n<jats:sec id=\"sec004\">\n<jats:title>Results<\/jats:title>\n<jats:p>Despite fluctuations, the number of daily tweets was relatively stable (average number of daily tweets = 33.4) with a sole conspicuous spike happening on a few days after August 11, 2020 when a research team published findings that teenagers and young adults who vape face a much higher risk of COVID-19 infection than their peers who do not vape. Topic modeling generated 8 topics: linkage between vaping and risk of COVID-19 infection, vaping pneumonia and the origin of COVID-19, vaping and spread of COVID-19, vaping regulation, calling for quitting vaping, protecting youth, similarity between e-cigarette or vaping-associated lung injury (EVALI) and COVID-19, and sales information. Daily sentiment scores showed that the public sentiment was predominantly negative, but became slightly more positive over the course of the study time period.<\/jats:p>\n<\/jats:sec>\n<jats:sec id=\"sec005\">\n<jats:title>Conclusions<\/jats:title>\n<jats:p>While some content in the public discourse on vaping before the COVID-19 pandemic continued in Twitter posts during the COVID-19 time period, new topics emerged. We found a substantial amount of anti-vaping discussion and dominantly negative sentiment around vaping during COVID-19, a sharp contrast to the predominantly pro-vaping voice on social media in the pre-COVID-19 period. Continued monitoring of social media conversations around vaping is needed, and the public health community may consider using social media platforms to actively convey scientific information around vaping and vaping cessation.<\/jats:p>\n<\/jats:sec>","DOI":"10.1371\/journal.pone.0260290","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2021,12,8]],"date-time":"2021-12-08T18:24:49Z","timestamp":1638987889000},"page":"e0260290","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1371\/journal.pone.corrections_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":6,"title":["Vaping discussion in the COVID-19 pandemic: An observational study using Twitter data"],"prefix":"10.1371","volume":"16","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-4178-6746","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Joanne Chen","family":"Lyu","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Garving K.","family":"Luli","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Pamela M.","family":"Ling","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"340","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2021,12,8]]},"reference":[{"key":"pone.0260290.ref001","unstructured":"Johns Hopkins Medicine. 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Available from: https:\/\/www.healthline.com\/health\/smoking-vaping-covid-19-risks."},{"key":"pone.0260290.ref006","article-title":"Vaping and COVID-19: Can Vaping Increase Complications?","author":"Health Matters","year":"2020"},{"issue":"1","key":"pone.0260290.ref007","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"765","DOI":"10.1186\/s12931-019-1206-8","article-title":"Electronic cigarette vapour increases virulence and inflammatory potential of respiratory pathogens","volume":"20","author":"DF Gilpin","year":"2019","journal-title":"Respiratory Research"},{"issue":"1","key":"pone.0260290.ref008","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2001645","DOI":"10.1183\/13993003.01645-2020","article-title":"COVID-19 and vaping: risk for increased susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 infection?","volume":"56","author":"KD McAlinden","year":"2020","journal-title":"European Respiratory Journal"},{"issue":"1","key":"pone.0260290.ref009","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"61","DOI":"10.7326\/M20-1212","article-title":"Collision of the COVID-19 and Addiction Epidemics","volume":"173","author":"ND Volkow","year":"2020","journal-title":"Annals of Internal Medicine"},{"issue":"4","key":"pone.0260290.ref010","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"519","DOI":"10.1016\/j.jadohealth.2020.07.002","article-title":"Association Between Youth Smoking, Electronic Cigarette Use, and COVID-19","volume":"67","author":"SM Gaiha","year":"2020","journal-title":"Journal of Adolescent Health"},{"key":"pone.0260290.ref011","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"l5275","DOI":"10.1136\/bmj.l5275","article-title":"What are the respiratory effects of e-cigarettes?","volume":"366","author":"JE Gotts","year":"2019","journal-title":"BMJ"},{"issue":"21","key":"pone.0260290.ref012","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"4967","DOI":"10.1111\/bph.15157","article-title":"The potential of cannabidiol in the COVID\u201019 pandemic","volume":"177","author":"G Esposito","year":"2020","journal-title":"British Journal of Pharmacology"},{"issue":"9","key":"pone.0260290.ref013","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1667","DOI":"10.1093\/ntr\/ntaa064","article-title":"Public Health Concerns and Unsubstantiated Claims at the Intersection of Vaping and COVID-19","volume":"22","author":"A Majmundar","year":"2020","journal-title":"Nicotine & Tobacco Research"},{"issue":"4","key":"pone.0260290.ref014","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"268","DOI":"10.1111\/hir.12192","article-title":"Consumer health information seeking in social media: a literature review.","volume":"34","author":"Y Zhao","year":"2017","journal-title":"Health Information & Libraries Journal"},{"issue":"8","key":"pone.0260290.ref015","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"810","DOI":"10.1093\/ntr\/ntq101","article-title":"\"I\u2019ll be your cigarette\u2014Light me up and get on with it\": Examining smoking imagery on YouTube","volume":"12","author":"SR Forsyth","year":"2010","journal-title":"Nicotine & Tobacco Research"},{"issue":"2","key":"pone.0260290.ref016","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"139","DOI":"10.1136\/tobaccocontrol-2011-050193","article-title":"New media and tobacco control","volume":"21","author":"B Freeman","year":"2012","journal-title":"Tobacco Control"},{"issue":"1","key":"pone.0260290.ref017","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"e24859","DOI":"10.2196\/24859","article-title":"Electronic Cigarette Users\u2019 Perspective on the COVID-19 Pandemic: Observational Study Using Twitter Data.","volume":"7","author":"Y Gao","journal-title":"JMIR Public Health and Surveillance"},{"issue":"10","key":"pone.0260290.ref018","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"e21743","DOI":"10.2196\/21743","article-title":"Intersection of the Web-Based Vaping Narrative With COVID-19: Topic Modeling Study","volume":"22","author":"K Janmohamed","year":"2020","journal-title":"Journal of Medical Internet Research"},{"key":"pone.0260290.ref019","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"120592","DOI":"10.1016\/j.techfore.2021.120592","article-title":"The impact of the pandemic declaration on public awareness and behavior: Focusing on COVID-19 google searches","volume":"166","author":"SP Jun","year":"2021","journal-title":"Technological Forecasting and Social Change"},{"key":"pone.0260290.ref020","article-title":"large-scale COVID-19 Twitter chatter dataset for open scientific research\u2014an international collaboration","author":"JM Banda","year":"2021","journal-title":"AZenodo"},{"key":"pone.0260290.ref021","unstructured":"Documenting the Now. 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