Seeing through the smoke : a world-wide comparative study of e-cigarette flavors, brands and markets using data from Reddit and Twitter

Abstract: The growing popularity of E-cigarettes, an alternative to cigarettes, has motivated us to study trends of the brands, flavors and online market activity using posts from Reddit and Twitter. The main motivation for this world-wide study is to emphasize the difference that laws and regulations have on the usage and availability of different flavors and brands of vapes in different countries. Data has been obtained from subreddits belonging to e-cigarette communities from Australia, Canada, Europe, and the UK. Extensive cleaning of data, and rigorous text mining operations provide varying results for different countries. Varying results have been obtained from Reddit and Twitter since they provide different atmospheres to the users.