Computer Science

Investigating Drug Addiction Discourse on YouTube

Document Type

Conference Paper

Abstract

Drug addiction has become one of the most severe social problems in the United States. Recent research has turned attention to the possibility of using social media to detect opioid usages and offer interventions. However, most prior studies focus on textual and networking-based social media such as Twitter and Facebook. There is limited understanding of how video-based platforms, such as YouTube, allow creators to share drug addiction-related videos and discourse addiction problems. This work is an initial step to fill this knowledge gap by analyzing 166 YouTube videos. We found that YouTubers leverage videos to disclose personal addiction experiences, provide professional recommendations, and express addiction-related opinions and lifestyles. Therefore YouTube videos discuss more of the risks, blames, and solutions of drug addiction. ∗Trigger warning: this paper contains substance abuse, addiction, and mental illness.

Publication Title

Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, CSCW

Publication Date

2021

First Page

130

Last Page

134

ISBN

9781450384797

DOI

10.1145/3462204.3481762

Keywords

Addiction, Content Sharing, Disclosure, Social Computing, Social Media, Substance Abuse, Substance Use Disorder, YouTube

APA Citation

McKim, K. G., Mai, C., Hess, D., & Niu, S. (2021, October). Investigating drug addiction discourse on youtube. In Companion Publication of the 2021 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (pp. 130-134).

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