{
  "abstract": "Background Vaping is an emergent public health concern, particularly among young people and those who have never smoked. Social media shapes perceptions of vaping-related harm, with style, content, and source influencing attitudes and behaviours. Despite TikTok’s prohibition on the promotion and marketing of e-cigarettes, vaping remains a prominent topic on the platform. This study explores how vaping is portrayed, perceived, and promoted on TikTok, and the extent to which TikTok content aligns with current evidence and health policy.Methods A dataset was built using a metadata scraper to collect top-trending public English language videos available within the United Kingdom tagged #vaping. We performed thematic content analysis examining vaping framings and narratives.Results 72 short-form videos, collectively generated over 75 million views and over 42,000 comments, were analysed. Four main themes were identified: health communication, interpersonal interactions surrounding vaping, the behavioural mechanisms underpinning vaping, and the effect of the online regulatory environment. Overall sentiment towards vaping was negative (n=45, 63%). Few videos (n=13, 18%) were by healthcare professions. Several videos promoted commission-based vaping interventions (n=4, 6%) and others featured children and young people (n=12, 17%), despite the existing policy and restrictive privacy settings.Conclusion Tobacco and vaping control policies need to recognise and address the influence of social media platforms as they become an ever-more mainstream driver of health information and social norms. TikTok is a dominant platform with ever-greater reach into younger people. Public Health research must prioritise this space to understand social media’s impact and its potential as a modality for improving population health.",
  "authors": [
    {
      "affiliations": [
        "School of Public Health, Imperial College London, London, UK",
        "Imperial College School of Medicine, Imperial College London, London, UK"
      ],
      "name": "Kim Alipio"
    },
    {
      "affiliations": [
        "School of Public Health, Imperial College London, London, UK",
        "Imperial College School of Medicine, Imperial College London, London, UK"
      ],
      "name": "Georgia Peers"
    },
    {
      "affiliations": [
        "School of Public Health, Imperial College London, London, UK",
        "Imperial College School of Medicine, Imperial College London, London, UK"
      ],
      "name": "Christopher-James Harvey"
    },
    {
      "affiliations": [
        "School of Public Health, Imperial College London, London, UK",
        "Imperial College School of Medicine, Imperial College London, London, UK"
      ],
      "name": "Richard Pinder"
    }
  ],
  "title": "P09-2 Vaping on TikTok: a cross-sectional content analysis of short-form videos and their health policy implications",
  "uid": "c4ed1830-7499-52db-bbb3-975ba1a9f258"
}