How to create social media contents based on Motivational Interviewing approach to support tobacco use cessation? A content analysis

Abstract

Objective
This study aimed at identifying which types of social media content could achieve positive differences in Facebook users’ interactions and smokers’ motivational language between posts with and without motivational interviewing (MI) content.

Methods
We included 701 Facebook posts (N = 701) which were categorized into five different groups according to specific MI strategies. The control group comprised entertaining and informative posts. Primary outcomes were Facebook users’ interactions: engagement rate, negative feedback, and fan-total reach ratio. Secondary outcomes were Facebook post comments reflecting smokers’ motivational language: change talk and sustain talk.

Results
Facebook posts which used MI strategies were associated with significantly higher engagement rate, higher fan-total reach ratio, and more change talk compared to the control group. Of specific MI strategies, “elaborating change talk” strategies elicited considerably more change talk. “Affirming change talk” strategies obtained higher fan-total reach ratio and generated significantly more change talk. Finally, “relational MI” strategies achieved significantly higher engagement rate..

Conclusions
Social media contents based on MI increased engagement and generated conversation about tobacco use cessation without relevant negative feedback. The findings suggest that MI strategies may play a promising role in creation of social media contents to support tobacco use cessation.

Full text

This is a preprint of an article
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Original Article (PrePrint)
Dávid Pócs, Tímea Óvári, Jezdancher Watti, Csaba Hamvai, Oguz Kelemen. How to
create social media contents based on Motivational Interviewing approach to support
tobacco use cessation? A content analysis. Journal of Substance Use. 2021 Aug 23.
DOI: 10.1080/14659891.2021.1967484
How to create Social Media Contents based
on Motivational Interviewing Approach to
support Tobacco Use Cessation?
A Content Analysis.

This is a preprint of an article
published by Taylor & Francis in Journal of Substance Use on 23 Aug 2021,
available at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14659891.2021.1967484.
Abstract
Objective:
This study aimed at identifying which types of social media content could achieve
positive differences in Facebook users’ interactions and smokers' motivational
language between posts with and without motivational interviewing (MI) content.
Methods:
We included 701 Facebook posts (N=701) which were categorized into
five different groups according to specific MI strategies. The control group
comprised entertaining and informative posts. Primary outcomes were Facebook
users’ interactions: engagement rate, negative feedback, and fan-total reach ratio.
Secondary outcomes were Facebook post comments reflecting smokers’
motivational language: change talk and sustain talk.
Results:
Facebook posts which used MI strategies were associated with significantly higher
engagement rate, higher fan-total reach ratio, and more change talk compared
to the control group (p<.05). Of specific MI strategies, “elaborating change talk”
strategies elicited considerably more change talk (p<.001). “Affirming
change talk” strategies obtained higher fan-total reach ratio and generated
significantly more change talk (p<.05). Finally, “relational MI” strategies achieved
significantly higher engagement rate (p<.001).
Conclusions:
Social media contents based on MI increased engagement and generated
conversation about tobacco use cessation without relevant negative feedback.
The findings suggest that MI strategies may play a promising role in creation of
social media contents to support tobacco use cessation.
Keywords: tobacco use; tobacco use cessation; motivation; social media; internet

This is a preprint of an article
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Introduction
Tobacco Use Cessation on Facebook
Considering the large number of internet users, the internet is a potential platform for
tobacco use reduction. A systematic review suggests that interactive web-based smoking
cessation interventions are more effective than controls which use printed self-help guides
(Taylor et al., 2017). Social media typically requires greater activity from the internet
user, which should increase the preliminary effectiveness of smoking reduction
interventions based on social media (Naslund et al., 2017). The popularity and daily usage
of Facebook has great potential in smoking cessation support among young adults (Ramo
et al., 2015). Facebook users’ engagement can be increased with posts about the
advantages of quitting or posts that provide information on smoking cessation (Thrul et
al., 2015). These findings have opened an exciting direction for the current research to
reveal Facebook users' interactions to a publicly available tobacco-reduction
Facebook page.
The Motivational Language
Motivational interviewing (MI) is a person-centred counselling style to address the
common problem of ambivalence about change (Miller & Rollnick, 2013). A meta-
analysis of MI versus brief advice or usual care revealed a significant increase in quitting
smoking (Lindson et al., 2010). The motivational language which could predict outcomes
is a central hypothesized mechanism in MI (Moyers et al., 2016). Change talk is thought
to be associated with better behavioural outcomes (Miller & Rose, 2009). Many reviews
have confirmed that change talk is linked to improvements in outcomes (Apodaca &
Longabaugh, 2009; Lombardi et al., 2014), but further high-quality research is needed for
full certainty (Copeland et al., 2015; Magill et al., 2019). Sustain talk is a verbalization

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of status quo and cons for change (Miller & Rose, 2009). Some novel studies have
proposed that sustain talk is associated with negative behavioural outcomes using MI
(Apodaca et al., 2014). No research has been found that analysed the motivational
language during online tobacco use cessation intervention.
Motivational Interviewing Strategies
Traditionally, MI is used offline, but in the last few years some studies have examined
the online application of MI strategies in health behaviour change (West et al., 2016).
For example, a tailored, MI-based, online intervention targeted at daily smokers who do
not intend to quit increased their receptivity to information about quitting and helped
them to reduce the number of cigarettes per day (Bommelé et al., 2017). Studies revealed
that cultivating change talk and softening sustain talk can increase the efficiency of
smoking cessation interventions (Lindqvist et al., 2017). More change talk could be
generated by elaborating with open questions, affirming, and reflecting (Apodaca et al.,
2016). The goal of softening sustain talk is to decrease the depth, strength, or momentum
of the sustain talk (Moyers et al., 2016). Some MI strategies have a combined effect; for
example, affirmation can both increase change talk and reduce sustain talk (Apodaca et
al., 2016). Relational MI strategies also have an important role in MI (Miller & Rose,
2009). Expressing empathy is known to be associated with better behavioural outcomes
(Gaume et al., 2008). The aim of technical MI strategies is behavioural change,
meanwhile, the goal of relational MI strategies is building a relationship (Miller &
Rollnick, 2013; Magill et al., 2018). No previous study has investigated how the different
types of social media content based on MI are related to Facebook users’ interactions and
smokers’ motivational language.

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The Investigated Facebook Page
The “Cigarette break” Facebook page (www.facebook.com/cigiszunet) is a Hungarian
public, web-based smoking cessation intervention, which has adopted the MI approach.
MI strategies have been deliberately involved in the creation of Facebook posts, and
social media contents were usually published daily since the beginning. The authors
as MI-experienced healthcare professionals manage the page and create the social media
contents. As of March 23, 2019, the Facebook page had 5,935 likes and a monthly total
reach of 23,089 people. ‘Facebook page like’ means an interest and support for the page,
and the ‘page fan’ is a Facebook user who used the ‘Facebook page like’ button. The
monthly 'total reach' is the number of people (fans and non-fans) who saw the Facebook
page's posts in the last month. The relationship between the number of 'page fans' and
'total reach' can be assessed by the 'fan-total reach ratio'. If the number of fan Facebook
users who saw the post (fan reach) divided by the total number of people who saw the post
(total reach), we get the 'fan-total reach ratio'. We used this ratio as an outcome in our
research. In all, 54% (3177/5932) of the Facebook page fans were women and 46%
(2754/5952) were men. The majority (83%, 4933/5932) was between the ages of 18 and
34 years. According to a previous online survey among the followers of this Facebook
page in 2018, 65% of the participants was smoker, 12% former smokers and 23% non-
smokers (Pócs et al., 2019). The majority of smokers (94%) used tobacco daily, while
the minority (6%) used tobacco occasionally. The most commonly nicotine product
was cigarette (98%), followed by e-cigarette (32%), hookah (20%), cigar (6%) snus (2%),
pipe (2%) and snuff (2%) (Pócs et al., 2019). We summarized the hypotheses of
the current research about the possible effects of post creation strategies based
on the theoretical framework of MI in Table 1.

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Table 1. Aims and hypotheses of the current study.
1) Main Aim: To evaluate the advantages of motivational interviewing strategies
in a Facebook-based tobacco use cessation intervention. Hypotheses are:
a) Motivational interviewing strategies will receive significantly higher
engagement rate and fan-total reach ratio compared to the control group.
b) Motivational interviewing strategies will generate significantly less negative
feedback compared to the control group.
c) Motivational interviewing strategies will elicit significantly more change talk
and less sustain talk compared to the control group.
2) Secondary Aim: To evaluate the impact of each motivational interviewing
strategy. Hypotheses are:
a) “Elaborating change talk” strategies will elicit significantly more change talk
compared to the control group.
b) “Softening sustain talk” strategies will generate significantly more or less
sustain talk compared to the control group.
c) “Relational motivational interviewing” strategies will receive significantly
higher engagement rate compared to the control group.
Materials and methods
Social Media Content Types
We exported “Facebook Insights” page and post data posted on Facebook between March
7, 2017 and March 7, 2019 on March 23, 2019. In all, 816 posts were made in this period,
and we excluded 55 admin’s posts, 6 boosted posts, 7 MI non-adherent posts, and 47 posts
which were targeted at non-smokers and electronic cigarette users. After data exclusion,
701 posts were included (N=701), which were targeted at tobacco users, followed the MI
spirit (MI adherent posts), and did not use financed, boosted posts. Then, we classified
these posts into 8 categories using MI strategy terms described in Table 2 (Miller &
Rollnick, 2013; Moyers et al., 2016). The 8 types of social media contents included the

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following: 4 technical MI strategies (“elaborating change talk”, “affirming change talk”,
“reflecting change talk”, and “softening sustain talk”), 2 relational MI strategies
(“building partnership” and “expressing empathy”), and 2 categories for the control group
(“entertaining” and “giving information”). ‘Elaborating change talk’ posts used asking
strategies, such as ‘exploring goals and values’. ‘Affirming change talk’ posts
emphasized efforts, strengths, ability to succeed or ability to make decisions. ‘Reflecting
change talk’ posts captured and illustrated role models for success, efficient cessation
methods or emotions. ‘Softening sustain talk’ posts showed a marked effort to decrease
sustain talk. ‘Building partnership’ posts requested smokers' opinion about important
issues of tobacco use, such as social acceptability. ‘Expressing empathy’ posts
emphasized an understanding of smokers’ point of view. ‘Entertaining’ posts provided
enjoyable content for the audience without ridiculing, labeling, blaming, moralizing, or
arguing. ‘Informative’ posts gave general and neutral information without persuading,
advising, or warning. We present examples and definitions of all types of social media
content in the Appendix. In order to validate the classification, the four authors classified
the 200 included posts into 8 categories separately and then compared them for coherence
(Fleiss kappa value of 0.847). Any divergence in categorization was discussed.
Thereafter, these four raters categorized all the 701 included posts separately again
(Fleiss kappa value of 0.860). 443 Facebook posts met the requirements of the six MI-
based post categories. The control group consisted of 258 Facebook posts, which did not
use MI strategies.

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Table 2. Definitions of social media content types used in the current study.
1) Technical Motivational Interviewing Strategies
a) Cultivating change talk. Each post shows a marked effort to increase the depth,
strength, or momentum of the smokers’ language in favor of tobacco use cessation
or smoking behavior control. This type of strategies includes: “elaborating”,
“affirming”, “reflecting” (EAR).
i) Elaborating change talk. These posts used asking strategies about tobacco use
cessation or smoking behavior control: “evocative questions”, “asking for
elaboration or examples”, “exploring decisional balance”, “exploring goals and
values”, “looking forward”.
ii) Affirming change talk. These posts emphasized something positive and genuine
in tobacco use cessation or smoking behavior control: smokers’ efforts and
strengths (“affirmation”), ability to make decisions and self-determination
(“emphasizing personal control”), ability to succeed (“support self-efficacy”).
iii) Reflecting change talk. These posts captured and illustrated to smokers
something about tobacco use cessation or smoking behavior control: emotions
(“simple reflection”), role models for success (“normalizing”), and efficient
cessation methods (“planning”).
b) Softening sustain talk. Each post shows a marked effort to decrease the depth,
strength, or momentum of the smokers’ language in favor of remaining a tobacco
user or failing to control smoking behavior. This type of strategies includes: “amplified
reflection”, “double-sided reflection” and “reframing”.
2) Relational Motivational Interviewing Strategies
a) Building partnership. Each post conveys an understanding that expertise and wisdom
about important issues of tobacco use reside mostly within the smoker (“request for
opinion”). Themes: social acceptability of smoking, tobacco control policies, tobacco
marketing.
b) Expressing empathy. Each post shows evidence of deep understanding of smokers’
point of view, both the smoker’s explicit statement and implication (“empathic
reflection”). Themes: smokers’ stigmatization, nicotine withdrawal, smoking relapse.
3) Control group
a) Giving information without confrontation. Each post gives general and neutral
information without persuading, advising or warning. Typically, the aim of these posts
is informing and not changing behavior or making relationships.
b) Entertaining without confrontation. Each post provides enjoyable content for the
audience without ridiculing, labeling, blaming, moralizing or arguing. Typically, the
aim of these posts is entertaining and not changing behavior or making relationships.

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Primary Outcomes
We summarized the definitions of primary and secondary outcomes in Table 3.
Engagement rate, negative feedback and fan-total reach ratio were the primary outcomes
which represented Facebook users’ interactions. We calculated the engagement rate
by dividing the number of post clicks plus the number of positive interactions (likes,
comments, shares) by the total reach (the number of people who saw the post).
Negative feedback is the total number of negative interactions (e.g. post hides or unlike
of page). We also calculated fan-total reach ratio by dividing fan reach by total reach.
Therefore, we measured how the content stimulated interactions (high engagement rate),
or inhibited interactions (large number of negative feedback), or how it appealed to the
audience of the investigated Facebook page (high fan-total reach ratio), or how it appealed
to non-fan Facebook users who had not like the Facebook page before they saw the post
(low fan-total reach ratio). It should be noted that engagement rate and negative feedback
evaluate the quality of the interaction, while fan-total reach ratio shows who is more
interactive: Facebook page fans or non-fans. Some of non-fan Facebook users are
presumably new social media users on a Facebook page. A lower fan-total reach ratio can
raise the possibility of reaching new Facebook users, that is the total reach increases with
new non-fans. It should be pointed out, that by creating Facebook profiles social media
users agree to the terms and conditions of the Facebook platform, which include clauses
on accessing their data by third parties, including researchers. We exported primary
outcomes from “Facebook Insights” data, which contains hundreds of anonymized and
aggregate data; therefore, Facebook users cannot be identified.

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Table 3. Definitions of primary and secondary outcomes used in this study.
1) Facebook users’ interactions (primary outcomes)
a) Engagement rate. The number of people who liked, commented, shared
(positive interactions), or clicked on the post divided by the number of people
who saw the post (total reach).
b) Negative feedback. The total number of negative interactions (post hides,
hides of all posts, reports of spam, unlike of page).
c) Fan-total reach ratio. The number of fan Facebook users who had liked the
Facebook page before they saw the post (fan reach) divided by the total
number of people who saw the post (total reach).
2) Motivational language (secondary outcomes)
a) Change talk. Any smoker’s comment that favors movement toward tobacco
use cessation.
b) Sustain talk. Any smoker’s comment that favors remaining a tobacco user
rather than movement toward tobacco use cessation.
Secondary Outcomes
Next, we analysed the Facebook users’ comments. We ignored comments on shared
posts, because many sharing occurred in private messages, closed or secret Facebook
groups, making it impossible to analyse them. The influence of the Facebook posts may
be related to the first comments on those posts. Second and third comments may be the
Facebook users’ responses to the comments, and not the responses to the social media
contents. That is why both second and third comments were excluded. We collected
516 first comments on the Facebook page’s posts in the investigated period.
We categorized first comments to receive smokers’ motivational language as
secondary outcomes: change talk and sustain talk, which are described in Table 3.
For the categorization of comments, we applied traditional and clear definitions of MI
language. Two raters classified all the 516 first comments separately into 3 categories:

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change talk, sustain talk, and neutral (non-MI) comments (Cohan kappa value of 0.964).
After excluding 312 non-MI comments, the total number of MI comments was 204, which
were used as secondary outcomes. MI comments were found in Facebook posts created
with or without MI strategies. Lastly, it should be noted that we collected these comments
from a publicly available, open Facebook page, where the aurthors’ identity as academic
researcher was transparent. Social media users were free to describe their feelings,
experiences and opinions about tobacco use and cessation. The Facebook users'
comments did not include personal or sensitive data.
Data Analysis
In the cases of negative feedback and fan-total reach ratio, we performed parametric tests
afterwards. For the other outcomes non-parametric tests were implemented. Firstly,
we compared MI strategies with the control group using Welch’s t-test and independent
two-sample t-test. Secondly, we compared each MI strategy to the control group using
the Kruskal–Wallis H test and one-way analysis of variance. Ethics permission for this
study was obtained from the Ethics Committee, Albert Szent-Györgyi Health Centre,
University of Szeged. Reference number: 3805/2016-SZTE.

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Table 4. Statistical differences between the post categories (N=701) according to primary
and secondary outcomes.
Post categories
Na
Primary
outcomes
Secondary outcomes
ERb
NFb
FTRRb
CTc
STc
n (%)
Mean (SD)
Mean (SD)
MI strategiesd
443 (63)
9.99 (7.95)
0.17 (0.42)
59.21 (19.65)
0.24 (0.83)
0.14 (0.61)
Control groupd
258 (37)
8.61 (6.01)
0.15 (0.43)
52.51 (20.47)
0.06 (0.32)
0.08 (0.32)
P-valuesd
.010
.506
<.001
<.001
.057
Elaborating CTe
121 (17)
10.62 (8.21)
0.20 (0.48)
57.61 (19.34)
0.36* (0.96)
0.21 (0.81)
Affirming CTe
87 (12)
8.36 (6.15)
0.14 (0.38)
60.70* (20.69)
0.32* (1.25)
0.10 (0.43)
Reflecting CTe
89 (13)
6.94 (4.32)
0.17 (0.38)
66.32* (18.92)
0.10 (0.54)
0.08 (0.43)
Softening STe
57 (8)
10.51 (9.51)
0.16 (0.37)
55.36 (18.88)
0.16 (0.45)
0.21 (0.82)
Relational MIe
89 (13)
13.44*
(9.37)
0.17 (0.43)
55.32 (18.56)
0.18 (0.47)
0.12 (0.39)
Control groupe
258 (37)
8.61 (6.01)
0.15 (0.43)
52.51 (20.47)
0.06 (0.32)
0.08 (0.32)
P-valuese
<.001
.820
<.001
<.001
.423
a. Total number of posts (N).
b. Engagement rate (ER); negative feedback (NF); fan-total reach ratio (FTRR).
c. Change talk (CT); sustain talk (ST).
d. Differences between the control group and motivational interviewing (MI) strategies together.
e. Differences between the control group and each motivational interviewing (MI) strategy:
elaborating change talk (CT); affirming change talk (CT); reflecting change talk (CT);
softening sustain talk (ST); and relational MI strategies.
* Significantly higher value compared to the control group using Dunn’s and Tukey's honestly
significant difference post hoc tests.

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Results
Motivational Interviewing versus Control Group
The statistical analysis of post categories is shown in Table 4. We compared technical
and relational MI strategies together with the control group to assess MI-based social
media contents in an online context. According to the results Facebook posts which used
MI strategies were associated with significantly higher engagement rate (t(653)=2.60,
p=.010) and significantly higher fan-total reach ratio (t(699)=4,29, p<.001).
These findings highlight that Facebook might be a suitable platform for MI strategies
because they seem to stimulate more interactions, and appeal more to the audience of
the Facebook page than giving information or entertaining, respectively. We also found
that there were significantly more change talk (t(623)=4.03, p<.001) on the Facebook
posts where MI strategies were used. These results show that MI strategies could facilitate
tobacco use cessation according to the larger number of change talk. Thereafter,
we assessed the relationship between the control group and each MI strategy to evaluate
the impact of MI-based social media contents separately.
Different Motivational Interviewing Strategies
Facebook Users’ Interactions
Firstly, Facebook users’ interactions (primary outcomes) were analysed. A Kruskal-
Wallis H test showed that there was a statistically significant difference in the engagement
rate between the different Facebook post categories (χ2(5)=45.27, p<.001). Dunn’s
pairwise tests were carried out for the six pairs of Facebook post groups. There was
a significant difference between the “relational MI” strategies with a higher engagement
rate and the control group (p<.001). This result suggests that “relational MI” strategies
could be efficient in stimulating interactions. One-way analysis of variance showed

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a statistically significant difference in fan-total reach ratio between the different
Facebook post categories (F(5, 695)=7.44, p<.001). Post hoc analysis using Tukey’s
honestly significant difference indicated that “reflecting change talk” strategies (p<.001)
and “affirming change talk” strategies (p=.011) were associated with significantly higher
fan-total reach ratio compared to the control group. These findings suggest that
“reflecting change talk” and “affirming change talk” strategies proved popular among the
audience of the Facebook page. We could not find a significant correlation between the
control group and MI strategies during the analysis of negative feedback. Contrary to
the hypothesis, these results suggest that negative feedback was not significantly less
in the study group.
Smokers’ Motivational Language
Secondly, we assessed the smokers’ motivational language (secondary outcomes).
A Kruskal-Wallis H test provided very strong evidence of a difference (χ2(5)=29.68,
p<.001) between Facebook post categories in the case of change talk comments.
“Elaborating change talk” strategies (p<.001) and “affirming change talk” strategies
(p=.006) generated significantly more change talk comments compared to the control
group. These results show that “elaborating change talk” and “affirming change talk”
strategies could be useful in web-based smoking cessation interventions.
Significant difference in the number of sustain talk comments was not detected between
the control group and MI strategies.

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Discussion
Motivational Interviewing in Facebook Posts
Findings may have important implications for health care professionals who want
to publish social media contents on Facebook about tobacco use cessation. Firstly,
MI strategies may have some benefits regarding to Facebook users’ interactions.
The content analysis highlighted that MI strategies appear to stimulate significantly more
interactions (higher engagement) and these Facebook posts were more popular
with the audience of the Facebook page (higher fan-total reach) compared to the control
group. On the other hand, we could not find a significant difference in negative feedback
between MI strategies and the control group. In all, these might suggest that the utilization
of MI strategies stimulated and did not inhibit the interactions with the Facebook users.
Moreover, only a small number of negative feedbacks were found, may be due to the MI
adherent social media contents. Secondly, as hypothesized in previous studies (Lindqvist
et al., 2017; Apodaca et al., 2016), MI strategies elicited significantly more change talk
about tobacco use cessation than the control group. These results suggest that MI
strategies may play an important role in the creation of smoking cessation support
contents. In the future, it would be interesting to assess how could be MI strategies
applicable to other online platforms.
Strategies and their benefits
The major practical implications of different MI strategies are discussed in Figure 1.
The results might suggest that “elaborating change talk” and “affirming change talk”
strategies could generate several change talk comments about tobacco use cessation.
Consequently, these strategies could be advantageous in creation of smoking cessation
support contents on Facebook. In addition, the content analysis of websites, blogs or other

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social media pages regarding to these MI strategies may be an exciting research question
in the future. Given the popularity (high fan reach) of “affirming change talk” and
“reflecting change talk” strategies, they could contribute to a high retention of the target
audience. Further experimental investigations are needed to estimate the utilization of
these strategies in smoking cessation support Facebook groups or mobile applications,
which need a high retention rate. Finally, “relational MI” strategies might be practicable
to expand the target audience on Facebook, because these posts could stimulate
interactions (according to high engagement rate) with non-fan or new Facebook users
(regarding to low fan reach).
Limitations
Firstly, it should be noted that the audience of a Facebook page is heterogeneous.
Unfortunately, the availability of demographic data is limited, and smoking status is not
registered in Facebook, and these make hard to assess the behavioural changes. However,
the usefulness of Facebook users' interactions (e.g., engagement or fan reach)
is independent from smoking status, and only comments clearly written by smokers were
evaluated in the investigation. Facebook users' interactions and smokers' comments may
provide an immediate feedback for health care professionals who want to publish social
media contents on Facebook about tobacco use cessation. Secondly, boosted posts were
also excluded, although advertising could increase the reach of the Facebook page and
thereby the engagement rate or the fan-total reach ratio of a given Facebook post during
the advertising period. Lastly, MI post categories have been compiled using clear terms
described in the literature (Miller & Rollnick, 2013; Moyers et al., 2016). However,
the assessment of MI treatment fidelity in an online context may be also an exciting
research question in the future.

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Conclusions
Using MI strategies in Facebook post creation could provide an opportunity to stimulate
interactions with young smokers and evoke change talk about tobacco use cessation
without relevant negative feedback. The results have potential implications for public
health campaigns designed to Facebook-based tobacco use cessation interventions,
especially in post creation. Regarding the findings, we suggest implementing
MI strategies in these interventions.
Acknowledgments
We would also like to show our gratitude to the editorial staff of the investigated
Facebook page for tirelessly editing contents about smoking cessation, and we thank
all “anonymous” reviewers for their insights.
Declaration of interest statement
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public,
commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. The investigated Facebook page is a non-business
entity which employs volunteers and uses donations to sustain its mission. Authors have
no conflicts of financial or competitive interest to disclose. Original data are available
from the corresponding author on request.
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This is a preprint of an article
published by Taylor & Francis in Journal of Substance Use on 23 Aug 2021,
available at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14659891.2021.1967484.
Appendices
(1) Examples and definitions of social media content types (doc).
(2) Examples and definitions of motivational language (doc).
Graphical Abstracts of this article are in ResearchGate and Figshare websites!