Social Media Reactions to Sex Toy Criminalization in Ghana: Cross-Sectional Sentiment and Text Network Analysis.

Background: Sexuality discourse in Ghana has become more divided, especially around gender and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer rights, leading to new antigay laws criminalizing lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer activities, and other forms of sexual practices. One of the most controversial pieces of legislation, previously titled "The Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill," proposed in 2021, sought to criminalize the use of sex toys, sparking opposition from leading political figures. The then minister of communication, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, a staunch women's rights advocate, publicly opposed the clause criminalizing sex toys, stating that such initiatives infringed on women's sexual autonomy. Her stance sparked heated debates on several social media platforms, reflecting the broader tensions surrounding conversations about sexuality in Ghana. To better understand the public's reactions to the minister's counterproposal, we analyzed comments from various social media platforms. Objective: Specifically, we (1) investigated public perceptions and sentiments regarding the criminalization of sex toys as expressed on social media, and (2) identified whether sentiments differed across social media platforms (eg, are comments on X [X Corp] more negative compared to Instagram or Facebook [Meta Platforms, Inc]?). Methods: Using Python (Python Software Foundation) as a web scraping tool, we extracted public comments from Instagram, Facebook, X, and YouTube (YouTube, LLC). Comments were analyzed using natural language processing to categorize sentiments (positive, negative, and neutral, indicating support for opposition to the bill, support for introducing the bill, and no clear stance in either direction, respectively), and text network analysis was used to identify keywords and their relationships to central themes. We used conditional probability analyses to determine the likelihood that a given comment was classified as negative, positive, or neutral, depending on its source (Instagram, X, Facebook, or YouTube). Results: A total of 951 comments were retrieved: 62.7% (n=596) from Instagram, 28.2% (n=268) from X, 6.2% (n=59) from Facebook, and 2.9% (n=28) from YouTube. Negative sentiments dominated (n=631, 66.4%), with only 13.3% (n=126) positive and 20.4% (n=196) neutral sentiments. Strongly disapproving language-some directed towards the minister-was common. This included terms such as "lesbian," "disgrace," and "disgusting." X showed the highest proportion of negative sentiment (190/268, 70.9%), followed by Facebook (41/59, 69.5%), YouTube (18/28, 64.3%), and Instagram (382/596, 64.1%). Conditional probability analysis showed that Facebook and X had the highest likelihood of negative comments (0.7), and sentiment distribution differed significantly across platforms (P<.001). Text network analysis revealed recurring themes of morality, politics, stigma, and gender. Conclusions: Our findings highlight deep-rooted cultural resistance to non-heteronormative sexual behaviors in Ghana and also suggest that women's advocacy for sexual autonomy may elicit patriarchal backlash. However, emerging positive voices suggest gradual shifts toward recognizing sexual pleasure as a right, pointing to the need for comprehensive sexuality education that emphasizes positive sexuality and the multifaceted nature of the human sexual experience.