Check Out That #Rollgame: Amount and Themes of Little Cigar and Cigarillo Content on Twitter

Background: Despite recent increases in little cigar and cigarillo (LCC) use – particularly among urban youth, African Americans, and Latinos – research on targeted strategies marketing these products is sparse. Little is known about the amount or content of LCC messages users see or share on social media platforms, a popular communication medium among youth and communities of color.

Methods: Keyword rules were used to collect tweets related to LCCs from the Twitter Firehose between 01/01/2014 and 12/31/2014. Tweets were coded for flavor, price, health appeals, dual product use, sub-culture references (e.g., rap/hip-hop, celebrity endorsements) and were classified as commercial or "organic"/non-commercial using a combination of machine learning methods, keyword algorithms, and human coding. Metadata associated with each tweet were examined to characterize accounts tweeting about LCCs.

Results: Keyword filters captured over 2000000 LCC tweets in 2014. Preliminary analyses revealed that accounts tweeting commercial LCC content had lower Klout scores (a measure of online influence) than did “organic” accounts. Commercial tweeting was largely driven by a small group of highly active accounts. The majority of commercial tweets included links to websites that sell/promote LCCs. Commercial tweets included price discounts or coupons. A substantial proportion of “organic” LCC tweets contained references to marijuana, flavors, rap/hip-hop, urban subculture.

Conclusions: Twitter is a major information-sharing and marketing platform for LCCs. The presence and broad reach of LCC messages on Twitter warrants serious attention from public health professionals and policymakers. Future tobacco use prevention initiatives should be adapted to ensure they are inclusive of LCC use.