About Tobacco Watcher Our Vision The global tobacco control landscape is changing more quickly than ever. In this fast-paced world, Tobacco Watcher helps you stay on top of these changes by finding, analyzing, and delivering the world's tobacco-related news. Powered by cutting-edge innovations in machine learning and artificial intelligence, Tobacco Watcher empowers you to combat global tobacco use. Media monitoring provides valuable assessments of the tobacco control environment for tobacco control planning and evaluation. However, existing media monitoring approaches require scouring a substantial and growing number of disparate news sources, often leading to information overload. Tobacco Watcher addresses this challenge through a web application that automates the collection, querying, filtering, highlighting, integration, and analysis of tobacco-focused news media worldwide. An Analysis Engine Fueled by Data Tobacco Watcher rests on the largest assembly of data in the history of tobacco control. The AI behind Tobacco Watcher has investigated more than 25 million news articles. The Challenge Media monitoring is an essential tool for supervising the rapidly changing tobacco control environment. However, it comes with challenges: What news sources can be accessed? How should non-English sources be searched? What news reports should be saved for future analyses? How can news media be analyzed and shared efficiently with researchers, advocates, and regulators? The Solution Imagine having millions of global news reports collected in one place. Tobacco-related content is organized with precision around key topics (e.g., smoke-free laws) or products (e.g., electronic cigarettes), rivaling human-level judgment. Features include: Curated reports on your device, organized by topics and products. Emailed alerts tailored to your precise interests. Trend plotting for agenda setting or campaign evaluations. The Tobacco Watcher web application, a product of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Institute for Global Tobacco Control, leverages automation for data gathering, filtering, and analysis. Core Objectives The principal objective of Tobacco Watcher is to: Warehouse the greatest amount of tobacco-related news reports across diverse substantive, geographic, and linguistic areas. Avoid overwhelming users with excess information. Automate classification, provide flexible outputs, and support common media monitoring use cases. Using AI strategies, Tobacco Watcher not only automates the gathering and filtering of news but also enables actionable insights for tobacco control leaders. Research Tobacco Watcher has been utilized in various research contexts, particularly in studies focusing on the technologies behind Tobacco Watcher and the use of Tobacco Watcher for : Did Philip Morris International use the e-cigarette, or vaping, product use associated lung injury (EVALI) outbreak to market IQOS heated tobacco? In that study we tracked how Philip Morris’ press releases were covered by the news media, including some misleading claims that were later edited. Next generation media monitoring: Global coverage of electronic nicotine delivery systems (electronic cigarettes) on Bing, Google and Twitter, 2013-2018 In that study we described the development of Tobacco Watcher and how as an analysis engine it can be used for near real time needs assessment and tobacco control responses. The Data Pipeline Database Tobacco Watcher queries more than 600,000 news sources, including: News aggregators (e.g., Bing) RSS news feeds Curated news websites Social media platforms (including 500,000 tweets with URLs daily) With hundreds of tobacco-related keywords in 23 languages, Tobacco Watcher processes about 65,000 news reports per day. Reports area high degree of perfect precision (0.95). Translated: Retained reports are translated into English for deeper analysis. Warehoused: Structured reports are made accessible to users. AI-Powered Filters Primary Filters The Tobacco Watcher system supports the filtering of news articles based on: Subject: Articles are clustered into 16 policy domains inspired by WHO's MPOWER framework: Advertising: Articles on promotions, sponsorships, and marketing of tobacco through media. Age: Articles on age restrictions for purchasing or using tobacco, such as minimum age limits. Agriculture: Agriculture includes articles primarily about the farming and cultivation of tobacco plants. Air: Air includes articles primarily about efforts to prevent the use of tobacco products in indoor spaces to reduce secondhand smoke, environmental tobacco smoke, or passive smoking. This also includes vaping products. Additionally, articles about banning tobacco use in designated areas are also Air related. Criminal Justice: Criminal Justice includes articles primarily about crime, policing, or criminal prosecution that is principally about tobacco products. The article must be focussed on criminal justice directly linked to possession, selling, or transport of tobacco products. If the article is about a crime and tobacco products are mentioned in passing it is not relevant and should be ignored. Entertainment: Entertainment includes articles primarily about celebrities’ involvement with tobacco and tobacco use, or tobacco use in movies or other forms of entertainment. Environment: Environment includes articles primarily about the impact of tobacco on the environment. Covers pollution caused by smoking, cigarette butts, and anything that detrimentally affects nature. Flavor: Articles on flavored tobacco products, including bans, usage, and reviews. Industry: Articles on industry activities, including financial reports and mergers. Nicotine: Nicotine includes articles primarily about regulations that reduce or restrict the amount of nicotine in tobacco products. Articles can also be about the enforcement of these regulations, such as banning products that contain too much nicotine. Packaging: Packaging includes articles primarily about warning labels on tobacco packages, plain packaging on tobacco products, or graphic warnings on tobacco packaging. Prevalence: Articles on tobacco use statistics and trends, including user demographics. Prices: Articles on tobacco product taxes and minimum price regulations. Quitting: Articles on cessation methods, products, and programs, including cessation statistics. Health Warnings: Articles on dangers, diseases, and health risks associated with tobacco use. Retail: Articles on issues involving the point-of-sale for tobacco products, including online. Product: Articles focus on 8 product categories: Cigarettes, bidis, cigars, e-cigarettes, kreteks, smokeless tobacco, hookah, and heated tobacco. Geographic Focus: Articles are classified nationally and regionally using entity recognition. The system evolves dynamically. User feedback on classification accuracy improves future filtering capabilities. Core Features 1. Articles Each article is presented in a standardized format, including headline, date, source, language, and topic classification. Interactive features include "additional coverage" for related articles and user-driven feedback to refine classifications. Users can favorite articles, save searches, and share insights with others. 2. Alerts Receive news reports directly in your inbox without visiting the platform. Alerts can be tailored by: Keywords, subject, location, and frequency (daily, weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly). Alerts are grouped into: My Alerts (user-created), Recommended Alerts (system-suggested), and Shared Alerts (created by other users). 3. Analyses Analyze global tobacco trends using Tobacco Watcher's time-series analysis tools. Plot up to 5 trends simultaneously for: Data exploration, program planning, or campaign evaluations. Features include trend naming, customizable time windows, and data exports for external analysis. Who We Support Tobacco Watcher makes media monitoring easier and more effective, informing and improving global tobacco control efforts. Designed for: Tobacco control advocates Researchers Policy makers By classifying media by content and location in 23 languages, Tobacco Watcher enables exploration of the tobacco control landscape at an unprecedented scale. Spend less time searching and more time analyzing. Who We Are Tobacco Watcher was born out of the Institute for Global Tobacco Control at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Leadership Team Project Lead: Joanna Cohen, PhD, MHSc Bloomberg Professor of Disease Prevention and Director of IGTC at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Cohen brings nearly three decades of tobacco policy research expertise, focusing on public health policy adoption and implementation. Project Technical Lead: Mark Dredze, PhD John C. Malone Professor of Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Dredze specializes in AI and NLP for public health applications, including tobacco control, infectious disease surveillance, and clinical informatics. Project Manager: John W. Ayers, PhD, MA Computational epidemiologist and Vice Chief of Innovation at UC San Diego. Dr. Ayers focuses on integrating big data and AI to derive actionable public health insights, including real-time media analysis for tobacco control.