Substance Use Hashtags on TikTok | Joseph J. Trybala III

This project presents the first large-scale analysis of substance-related hashtag communities on TikTok. Using social network analysis across 2,333 hashtags and 39,509 videos, we identified 16 distinct hashtag communities — ranging from harm reduction advocacy to recreational use content — and characterized their structural and thematic relationships.

Available as a preprint on arXiv (Bouzoubaa et al., 2025).

Methods: Social network analysis, qualitative content coding, large-scale data collection.

Collaborators: Layla Bouzoubaa, Muqi Guo, Afsaneh Razi, Rezvaneh Rezapour

References

2025

arXiv

From #Dr00gtiktok to #harmreduction: Exploring Substance Use Hashtags on TikTok

Layla Bouzoubaa, Muqi Guo, Joseph Trybala, and 2 more authors

arXiv preprint, 2025

Bib

@article{bouzoubaa2025dr00gtiktok,
  author = {Bouzoubaa, Layla and Guo, Muqi and Trybala, Joseph and Razi, Afsaneh and Rezapour, Rezvaneh},
  title = {From \#Dr00gtiktok to \#harmreduction: Exploring Substance Use Hashtags on {TikTok}},
  journal = {arXiv preprint},
  year = {2025},
  eprint = {2501.16123},
  archiveprefix = {arXiv},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.16123},
}