Vaping is extremely common among teens and young adults, and social
media plays an increasingly large role in how people think about it. Even
when influencers post videos about quitting vaping, we don’t always know
how viewers actually react to those messages. Our project consists of looking
at the comment sections of videos people have made talking about their own
experiences with vaping, as well as their experiences with quitting vaping.
Our main video we are coding is by Mirabella McCall, who talks about her
experience on quitting vaping to see how people respond after watching it.
By studying real comments, we can better understand how vaping prevention
messages are received and what kinds of reactions they create.
Our lead client is Dr. Sara Pitman of the U of A and UAMS. We are
inducted into her research team to help gather information on vaping in youth.
Our project is real due to the fact that it includes working with real people and
real organizations. The research that we gather is to inform and teach people
why and how vaping is so susceptible in teens and young adults.
Our deliverable is a coded dataset and summary of results based on
comments from a mega influencer's YouTube video about quitting vaping. As
a team, we created a coding system and used it to sort comments into
different themes, such as whether the comment talked about vaping, shared
personal experiences, mentioned health concerns, or related to the video. We
are using our results to create visuals and summaries that can be shared at
conferences and potentially included in future research publications.
This project gave our team hands-on experience with real research that can
be used to make a difference. We learned how to analyze data, work together
as a research team, and think critically about how social media influences
health behaviors. We worked with a postdoctoral research mentor and used
only public, non-identifiable data. Overall, this project helped us understand
both the impact of vaping prevention and how research can be used to inform
and educate others.