“Toxic Butts”: Key Performance Indicators from a California Statewide Social Media Campaign for Tobacco Control.

Background: The “Toxic Butts” campaign was funded by the California Tobacco Control Program as part of a tobacco product waste toolkit. The campaign was to function as a case study, helping to establish best practices for social media use by tobacco control while at the same time serving as a training tool for local lead agencies interested in better leveraging social media. Little information existed on monitoring and evaluation of social media so new metrics were devised and results reported with the intent of publication. Methods: Campaign staff published English-language content twice a day, seven days a week, for six months. The same content was posted on Facebook and Twitter, with occasional exceptions made for character limits on Twitter. Data were collected usin Twitter and Facebook as primary sources, as well as with a third-party social media monitoring program. Interactions of social media users with the campaign’s content in Facebook and Twitter were examined using six key performance indicators. Two indicators offered novel approaches to quantify engagement, representing any action performed by a social media user with campaign content. Results: The six key performance indicators used to measure campaign performance indicated 1.1 million impressions of “Toxic Butts” campaign content by 340,200 individuals on Facebook, over the six-month period of the study. The largest proportion (42.96 percent) of the campaign’s Twitter followers (n=650) was between the ages of 35 and 44 years, whereas Facebook fans (n=1057) were primarily between the ages of 13 to 17 years (59.1 percent). Twitter followers were nearly evenly split between women and men (51 percent and 49 percent, respectively), whereas Facebook followers were mostly male (60.5 percent compared to 39.50 percent female). Health organizations (34.3 percent) represented the largest share of Twitter followers; Facebook followers were mostly individuals (92.8 percent). Engagement ratios clarified social media users’ interactions with campaign content month-by-month and were considered a valuable point of reference for the overall performance of campaign content. Discussion: The reported key performance indicatorsprovide a starting point of measures of engagement by social media users with a campaign, and the reach of a campaign’s content. Recommendations for future research are provided.

An experimental evaluation of the effectiveness of beach ashtrays in preventing marine contamination

In this study, hypotheses concerning the use of beach ashtrays were experimentally tested. Results indicated that the mean rate of abandonment of this equipment was low (1.5 percent). The mean amount of cigarette stubs (3.4 items/ashtray) was greater than mean amounts of other types of litter. People with different socioeconomic profiles had different perceptions regarding the issues associated with beach debris. These results indicated that beach ashtrays could be useful to prevent the contamination of these environments and that differences in socioeconomic characteristics of beachgoers could partially explain the differences in perceptions regarding the presence of waste on the beaches. This information could now be used by coastal managers to plan strategies to reduce the marine contamination.

A presença de resíduos sólidos no ambiente marinho é extensa. Praias são tipicamente contaminadas com esses materiais, que podem causar impactos ecológicos. Resíduos sólidos nas praias podem causar ferimentos nas pessoas e podem prejudicar a atividade turística. Neste estudo, hipóteses relativas ao uso de cinzeiros de praia foram testadas. Os resultados indicam que a taxa de abandono desse equipamento é pequena (1,5 por cento) e que a quantidade média de pontas de cigarro (3,4 itens/cinzeiro) é maior do que as quantidades médias de outros tipos de lixo. Também se observou que pessoas com diferentes perfis socioeconômicos apresentaram percepções diferentes relativas à presença de resíduos sólidos nas praias. Estes resultados sugerem que cinzeiros portáteis podem ser um equipamento importante na redução da contaminação das praias e que diferenças socioeconômicas dos freqüentadores das praias podem explicar parcialmente as diferentes percepções relativas à presença de resíduos no ambiente praial. Sugere-se que os gerentes costeiros usem esse tipo de informação para planejar estratégias de redução desse problema.