A Comparative Analysis of E-Cigarette and Cigarette Posts on Instagram

E-cigarette use has grown rapidly over the past decade and become a threat to public health. Marketing—especially through social media—has contributed significantly to this growth, which suggests that regulating content in social media will be critical in supporting efforts to reverse this trend. A content analysis was performed to compare 254 e-cigarette posts on Instagram with 228 cigarette posts on the same platform. The majority of e-cigarette posts were from e-cigarette companies (40.9%) and industry people (18.5%), whereas the majority of cigarette posts were from laypeople (76.8%). More e-cigarette posts than cigarette posts appeared to have a marketing intent (56.3% vs. 1.3%), and brand representation in photographs/videos was more frequent in the e-cigarette posts than in the cigarette posts (63.0% vs. 15.8%). Further, compared with the e-cigarette posts, the cigarette posts were more likely to portray daily life (73.2% vs. 41.3%) and humans (80.3% vs. 43.7%) in the photograph/video. The cigarette posts also portrayed smoking much more often than the e-cigarette posts portrayed vaping (67.1% vs. 21.3%). The study findings broaden the field’s understanding of cigarette and e-cigarette content on Instagram and social media, and have implications for monitoring and regulating content for e-cigarettes and cigarettes.