The intersection of the online vaping narrative with COVID-19: Topic modelling study.

Background The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has become a global pandemic as of March 11 2020. The relationship between vaping and contracting COVID-19 is unclear, with conflicting information online. There is some scientific evidence that vaping, cannabidiol (CBD - an active ingredient in cannabis from the hemp plant) or other substances, may be associated with more severe manifestations of COVID-19. However, there is also inaccurate information that vaping can aid COVID-19 treatment, and expert opinion that CBD, possibly administered through vaping, can mitigate COVID-19 symptoms. Thus, we need to study the spread of inaccurate information to better understand how to promote scientific knowledge and curb inaccurate information, critical to vapers' health. Inaccurate information about vaping and COVID-19 may affect COVID-19 treatment outcomes. Objective Using structural topic modelling, we mapped temporal trends in the online vaping narrative (a large dataset comprising online vaping chatter from several sources) to indicate how the narrative changed before versus during COVID-19. Methods We obtained data using a textual query that scanned a data pool of approximately 200000 (4027172 documents and 361100284 words) different domains such as public online forums, blogs and social media from August 1 2019 - April 21 2020. We then used structural topic modelling to understand changes in word prevalence and semantic structures within topics around vaping before and after December 31 2019, when COVID-19 was reported to the World Health Organization (WHO). Results Broadly, the online vaping narrative could be organized into the following groups or archetypes: 1) Harms from vaping; 2) Vaping regulation; 3) Vaping as harm reduction/treatment; 4) Vaping lifestyle. There were three archetypes pre-COVID-19, but four archetypes post-COVID-19 (vaping as harm reduction/treatment was the additional archetype). There was an emergence of a CBD product preference topic post-COVID-19 report, possibly related to vapers using CBD as a COVID-19 treatment. Conclusions Our main finding is the emergence of a vape-administered CBD treatment narrative around COVID-19, when comparing the pre-COVID-19 versus during COVID-19 online vaping narrative. Results are key to understanding how vapers respond to inaccurate information about COVID-19, allowing for optimized treatment of vapers who contract COVID-19, and possibly minimizing instances of inaccurate information. Findings have implications for the management of COVID-19 among vapers and monitoring of online content pertinent to tobacco, to develop targeted interventions to manage COVID-19 among vapers.