Open AccessReactions on Twitter towards Australia's proposed import restriction on nicotine vaping products: a thematic analysis
Author(s) -
Sun Tianze,
Lim Carmen C.W.,
Gartner Coral,
Connor Jason P.,
Hall Wayne D.,
Leung Janni,
Stjepanović Daniel,
Chan Gary C.K.
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
australian and new zealand journal of public health
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.946
H-Index - 76
eISSN - 1753-6405
pISSN - 1326-0200
DOI - 10.1111/1753-6405.13143
Subject(s) - government (linguistics) , thematic analysis , enforcement , descriptive statistics , medical prescription , criticism , advertising , public policy , content analysis , medicine , political science , business , sociology , law , social science , nursing , qualitative research , philosophy , linguistics , statistics , mathematics
Objective : In June 2020, the Australian Government announced that personal importation of nicotine vaping products (NVP) would be prohibited, pending a 12‐month classification and regulation review by the Therapeutic Goods Administration. This brief report examines the themes of responses on Twitter to this announcement. Methods : Simple random sampling was used to retrieve tweets containing keywords from 19 to 26 June 2020. Tweets were manually coded and descriptive statistics calculated for themes and policy position. Results : The vast majority of the 1,168 tweets were anti‐policy. Themes included: criticism towards government (59.8%), activism against NVP restriction (38%), potential adverse consequences (30.8%) and support for NVP restriction (1.4%). Tweets that identified potential adverse consequences of NVP restriction cited: smoking relapse for individuals currently using NVPs (75.6%); the impact of policy enforcement (8.6%); illicit market (8.3%); panic buying (3.6%); difficulty obtaining prescriptions (2.8%); and impacts on NVP businesses (2.8%). Conclusion : Tweets predominately objected to the policy announcement. Approximately three‐quarters of tweets that cited potential adverse consequences of the policy mentioned smoking relapse as their primary concern. Implications for public health : User‐generated content on Twitter was primarily used to lobby against the proposed policy, which was subsequently amended.