Categorizing IQOS-Related Twitter Discussions

Abstract

(1) Background: The heated tobacco product IQOS, by Philip Morris International, is now available in over 55 countries, including the United States. Social media sites such as Twitter are often used to promote or discuss tobacco products, though prior research has not examined how IQOS is presented on Twitter. (2) Methods: This study collected and categorized Twitter conversations involving IQOS. A manual content analysis was performed on N = 3916 English tweets related to IQOS published internationally between 1 January 2020 and 30 June 2020. (3) Results: Most tweets were either online marketing for IQOS (32.3%) or personal testimonials related to IQOS use (34.2%). Personal testimonial tweets made harm reduction claims about IQOS either as an avenue to quit smoking/tobacco use (3.4%), or in comparison to combustible cigarettes (2.0%). Tobacco policy-related tweets were detected (13.9%), split between discussions of United States (4.9%) and international (4.4%) policies. News media tweets (14.2%) were also detected. (4) Conclusions: Our study suggests IQOS may be understood as a less harmful alternative to vaping and combustible cigarettes. Discussions also suggest IQOS is likely to be used to avoid clean air policies or used in areas in which smoking is restricted.