Tracking real-time conversation on Twitter to gain insights into marijuana use
As more and more states in the US legalize medical and recreational marijuana use, our researchers are measuring the impact of increased usage on individuals, as well as the motivating factors behind usage, and the effects of usage over time.
Twitter holds a bounty of information about social issues, with individuals sharing unsolicited opinions in real time. As a leader in public health research, our researchers are analyzing these data and making them publicly available. Working in partnership, our subject matter experts and data scientists are mining publicly available tweets about cannabis as well as user profile data to capture insights about this evolving public health issue.
The result of these efforts is CannabisConvo, a dynamic website and powerful tool that provides real-time information to enable researchers and policymakers to discover new trends, build a richer picture of the online conversation, and make informed policy decisions.
As of the site’s launch in January 2017, we have analyzed and categorized more than 80 million cannabis-related tweets, averaging over 3 million new tweets per month.
Uncovering Trends in Conversations about Marijuana
As people tweet, CannabisConvo analyzes the text to identify messages relating to marijuana, cannabis, or pot and other slang terms. The data can then be processed and organized in several ways, such as by what’s trending, word similarity, and use of a term over time.
Using these data, our data scientists generate visualizations and applications to help researchers, policymakers, and the general public understand conversations on Twitter about cannabis.
For example, in mid-December of last year the words “North” and “Korea” were trending in marijuana-related tweets. The What’s Trending tool helped trace this spike to an article in High Times magazine about Chinese tourists in North Korea purchasing marijuana at low prices.
Insights on Twitter Communities Formed by Cannabis Dispensaries
In a recent study that illustrates the power of CannabisConvo, we investigated how California cannabis dispensaries form their own communities, share information about use, and market their retail products using Twitter. A sample of 125 dispensaries from the Bay Area and Greater Los Angeles were organized into several communities based upon their shared followers.
Studies are currently underway to better understand how characteristics of dispensaries—such as type of organization and availability of delivery services—affect community formation and various functions of Twitter use.
Beyond Cannabis Tracking
The study of Twitter use by cannabis dispensaries represents a new chapter in interdisciplinary research that leverages our expertise in data science, public health, and the social sciences. By combining this expertise with innovative digital methodologies, we aim to better understand complex social and public health issues like the retail marijuana markets that are emerging across the United States.
By developing tools to study digital information in real time, our scientists are able to systematically measure emergent trends in drug use and other important health issues. We see numerous applications for such tools as we continue to broaden our capabilities to other emerging health and public policy issues.
