The influence of pro-vaping gate watchers on the dissemination of COVID-19 misinformation on Twitter (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Misinformation about a potential protective role of nicotine against COVID-19 spread on Twitter despite significant evidence to the contrary. We suggest that the pro-vaping ideological slant of Twitter’s opinion leaders on this subject or “gatewatchers” helped drive the dissemination of such misinformation. OBJECTIVE This research examines Twitter discourse at the intersection of COVID-19 and nicotine 1) to identify the extent to which the most outspoken contributors to this conversation self-identify as vaping advocates and 2) to understand how and to what extent these gatewatchers influence the spread of misinformation about nicotine as a therapeutic against COVID-19. METHODS An exhaustive sample of tweets discussing nicotine and COVID-19 (N =1,420,271) posted during the first 9 months of the pandemic (January-September of 2020) was identified using validated keyword filters. The most prolific tweeters, i.e. gatewatchers, were identified and characterized. Additionally, the top hashtags and most shared URL’s were collected, in addition to a content analysis of the top 1,000 retweets. RESULTS Users self-identifying as “harm-reduction advocates” comprised 13 of the top 15 most active users, tweeting about COVID-19 and nicotine 25,332 times during this 9-month period, an average of M(SD) = 1,948 (995.08) tweets each with M(SD)=1,103 (830.15) retweets. The top 15 hashtags were used a total of 223,629 times. In addition to top hashtags related to COVID-19 and nicotine, other top hashtags included #quitforcovid (2.31% of hashtags used), #nomeatnocoronavirus (5.14%) and #wevapewevote (1.61%). Five of the top 15 URLs shared promoted the claim that nicotine is protective against COVID-19. Among the top 1,000 retweets (shared 578,762 times) 10.7% discussed the protective role of nicotine. Ninety-eight of the top retweets explicitly promoted the protective role of nicotine and were retweeted 21,782 times. CONCLUSIONS The pro-vaping orientation of Twitter’s most outspoken voices regarding COVID-19 and nicotine helped spread misinformation about a protective role of nicotine against COVID-19. Although these gatewatchers do not control what content is posted to Twitter, they have outsized influence over which content trends. The result is an information environment where pro-vaping information is far more likely to trend than information about the harms and consequences.