OMG. Those Smoking Commercials With the Lady With a Hole in Her Neck. It's Scary: A Content Analysis of Tweets From Cdc's Tips From Former Smokers Campaign

Theoretical Background and research questions/hypothesis:  Since its inception in 2006, Twitter is the fastest growing social media platform in the United States.   Social TV, the phenomenon of discussing popular television shows and commercials on social media platforms, has grown in conjunction with Twitter. Eighty percent of Americans report using smartphones or tablets while watching TV and forty percent of these visit a social network while watching TV.  Most television programs and televised advertising now have a social media component, designed to expand reach and engagement with the audience.   Can public health campaign evaluators utilize social TV data to monitor and measure the discussion of their advertising on television? Despite the rapid diffusion of social media use and social TV watching, to date, the tobacco control community has relied on traditional media—paid television, radio, billboard and print media advertising--to promote their messages. In one of the first tobacco control media campaigns to use both traditional and social media, on March 19^th, 2012 the CDC launched, “Tips from Former Smokers,” a $54 million anti-tobacco media campaign which was the agency’s first national effort to reduce smoking prevalence.  The campaign lasted four months, and included televised, radio, and print advertising, along with a website, Facebook page, YouTube channel, and a Twitter handle.   CDC reported a 132% increase in call volume to its national quit line when compared to a corresponding 12 week period in 2011.   Following up on this success, CDC launched a second campaign in March 2013 (Tips 2). The social media goals for “Tips from Former Smokers” campaign were to engage social media users, motivate them to become ambassadors for key campaign messages, encourage smokers to quit, and prevent youth initiation.  CDC created the Twitter user handle @CDCTobaccoFree and hashtag #CDCTips to tweet current data, campaign messages, and allow Twitter users to discuss the campaigns and its advertising.  

Methods:  All tweets associated with the Twitter handle @CDCTobaccoFree, the hashtag #cdctips, and all keywords related to the content of the CDC Tips ads were collected for both campaigns.  Besides the text of the tweet, other metadata--including hashtags, mentions, retweets, user names, user Twitter pages, internet devices, internet links, and geo-locations --are digitally imprinted with each tweet, and were also collected for the TIPs-related tweets. 

Results:  We will report on the overall reach and audience engagement of the campaign through an analysis of unique users reached, number of retweets, and mentions. A sentiment analysis was conducted on tweets to gauge the emotional valence of the campaign and individual television ads.  A majority of tweets contained fear words.  Finally, using keywords for quitting and uptake, the numbers of Twitter users that express interest in quitting or prevention will be reported. 

Conclusions: If viewers are expressing fear then ads should significantly impact outcomes like increased calls to to quitlines and quit attempts.

Implications for research and/or practice:  The digital curation and content analysis of Twitter data related to both the traditional and social media components of the TIPS campaign provides a useful tool for measuring online public engagement, audience sentiment, and campaign discourse.