Representation of commercial and traditional tobacco on social media: deconstructing historical narratives to address the Indigenous youth tobacco epidemic.

Background: Tobacco has significant cultural and spiritual uses in many Indigenous communities. The tobacco industry has long appropriated American Indian or Alaska Native (AI/AN or Indigenous) cultural imagery in print media and signage to advertise commercial tobacco products. In the internet era, little is known about the representation of commercial tobacco product advertising using AI/AN terms and images on social media.

Methods: With structured platform searches, custom data collection approaches and a combination of manual content analysis and natural language processing approaches (NLP), we identified and characterised content using the hashtag #TraditionalTobacco (specific to Indigenous contexts) on Instagram and Twitter.

Results: Using a combination of manual annotation and NLP, we identified prevalent themes and discussion topics, such as misrepresentation of traditional AI/AN uses of tobacco, appropriation of AI/AN imagery in retail advertising of tobacco and different uses for tobacco among North American Indigenous communities in 486 Instagram posts and 89 tweets. The representation of retail and recreational use of tobacco was more prevalent than traditional tobacco use on Instagram, a platform popular among youth and adolescents, while tobacco-related conversations on Twitter (X) primarily focused on debunking misconceptions about traditional tobacco use. Several tobacco retailers using AI/AN imagery in their advertising claimed to be affiliated with an AI/AN community, but we were unable to verify if these claims were authorised or legitimate.

Conclusions: Findings may inform the design of culturally appropriate tobacco cessation interventions among AI/AN youth and lead to greater regulation of commercial tobacco product advertising.