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Using social media commentary to better understand audience campaign engagement
Using social media commentary to better understand audience campaign engagement
Theoretical Background and research questions/hypothesis:
Social media comment threads can be places of encouragement, hostility, and everything in between. They can also provide key insights into how audiences interact with, understand, and respond to social media campaign messaging.
Program Background:
The Bureau of Tobacco Free Florida (BTFF) manages The Facts Now campaign which includes paid ads and organic posts on the Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok social media platforms and targets youth and young adults with tobacco prevention messaging.
Methods:
We coded and analyzed 1,254 comments in response to The Facts Now campaign posts from Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok from 2021 and 2022. A codebook was developed using both inductive and deductive methods, informed by the program’s campaign goals and trends in the data. We then conducted thematic analyses of the coded results.
Results:
Key themes emerged around criticism of the campaign, promoting and defending vaping, cigarette, and OTP (other tobacco products) use, acknowledging the harms of smoking combustible cigarettes and vaping, and discussions around cannabis.
Conclusions:
Campaigns focused on tobacco prevention for youth and young adults can reach their target audiences on social media channels through paid and organic content, and user comments from these audiences surface a range of topics, attitudes, and beliefs related to the campaign’s focus. Thematic insights derived from these analyses can inform recommendations for future campaign messaging development and delivery.
Implications for research and/or practice:
Through this analysis, we provided insights and recommendations for future campaign development. Moreover, we were able to better understand how key audiences interact with tobacco prevention content on social media.