Claire Meehan presentation to 3rd Annual Social Media in Social Research conference 24th June 2013

1. Using social media toUsing social media to
investigate younginvestigate young
people’s drug usepeople’s drug use
Dr Claire Meehan

2. Serendipity

3. Methods and analysis
• Sampling
• Thematic content analysis
• Focus groups
• Interviews
• Coding

4. Findings
• Young people were seeking information online
1. Printed and televised media
2. Access to an abundance of unregulated information
3. Emergence of smartphones
4. Addition of online peers
5. Drug user as drug educator
• Increased risk

5. Benefits of using social media
for drug research
• Novel way of looking at young people’s
drug behaviours
• Insight into where they obtain their
drug knowledge
• Insight into how they construct their
drug knowledge

6. Ethical implications
• Expectation of privacy vs. in the
public domain
• Confidentiality
• Anonymity
• Vulnerable young people

7. Pitfalls of using social media
• Relatively new
• Bias
• Context
• Interpretation
• Lack of generalisability

8. Future research
needed
• Tip of the iceberg
• Notion of online risk skewed
towards grooming
• Not enough acknowledgement of
drug harms

9. Thank you!Thank you!

10. Thank you!Thank you!