title: Tweeting for and against public health policy: response to the Chicago Department of Public Health's electronic cigarette Twitter campaign.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  In January 2014, the Chicago City Council scheduled a vote on local regulation of electronic cigarettes as tobacco products. One week prior to the vote, the Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH) released a series of messages about electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) through its Twitter account. Shortly after the messages, or tweets, were released, the department's Twitter account became the target of a "Twitter bomb" by Twitter users sending more than 600 tweets in one week against the proposed regulation.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  The purpose of our study was to examine the messages and tweet patterns in the social media response to the CDPH e-cigarette campaign.
  
  
  METHODS
  We collected all tweets mentioning the CDPH in the week between the e-cigarette campaign and the vote on the new local e-cigarette policy. We conducted a content analysis of the tweets, used descriptive statistics to examine characteristics of involved Twitter users, and used network visualization and descriptive statistics to identify Twitter users prominent in the conversation.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Of the 683 tweets mentioning CDPH during the week, 609 (89.2%) were anti-policy. More than half of anti-policy tweets were about use of electronic cigarettes for cessation as a healthier alternative to combustible cigarettes (358/609, 58.8%). Just over one-third of anti-policy tweets asserted that the health department was lying or disseminating propaganda (224/609, 36.8%). Approximately 14% (96/683, 14.1%) of the tweets used an account or included elements consistent with "astroturfing"-a strategy employed to promote a false sense of consensus around an idea. Few Twitter users were from the Chicago area; Twitter users from Chicago were significantly more likely than expected to tweet in support of the policy.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our findings may assist public health organizations to anticipate, recognize, and respond to coordinated social media campaigns.
authors.affiliation: Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, United States. harrisj@wustl.edu.
authors.forename: Jenine K
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3576-5906
authors.initials: JK
authors.lastname: Harris
authors.forename: Sarah
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9204-4654
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Moreland-Russell
authors.forename: Bechara
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7416-3887
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Choucair
authors.forename: Raed
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8484-0730
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Mansour
authors.forename: Mackenzie
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2289-8352
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Staub
authors.forename: Kendall
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5361-1564
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Simmons
mesh_terms: D057218:Blogging / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D002641:Chicago; D066300:Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems; D006291:Health Policy / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D006293:Health Promotion; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet; D011634:Public Health; D011639:Public Opinion; D011640:Public Policy / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D061845:Smoke-Free Policy / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D012907:Smoking / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D061108:Social Media
keywords: Twitter; e-cigarette; health departments