Characteristics of and User Engagement With Antivaping Posts on Instagram: Observational Study

Although government agencies acknowledge that messages about the adverse health effects of e-cigarette use should be promoted on social media, effectively delivering those health messages is challenging. Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms among US youth and young adults, and it has been used to educate the public about the potential harm of vaping through antivaping posts. We aim to analyze the characteristics of and user engagement with antivaping posts on Instagram to inform future message development and information delivery. A total of 11,322 Instagram posts were collected from November 18, 2019, to January 2, 2020, by using antivaping hashtags including #novape, #novaping, #stopvaping, #dontvape, #antivaping, #quitvaping, #antivape, #stopjuuling, #dontvapeonthepizza, and #escapethevape. Among those posts, 1025 posts were randomly selected and 500 antivaping posts were further identified by hand coding. The image type, image content, and account type of antivaping posts were hand coded, the text information in the caption was explored by topic modeling, and the user engagement of each category was compared. Analyses found that antivaping images of the educational/warning type were the most common (253/500; 50.6%). The average likes of the educational/warning type (15 likes/post) were significantly lower than the catchphrase image type (these emphasized a slogan such as "athletesdontvape" in the image; 32.5 likes/post; P