Newspaper coverage of tobacco control in New Zealand

Abstract

Objective: The New Zealand (NZ) government has proposed that the country be 'Smokefree' by 2025. This paper examines how NZ newspapers have portrayed tobacco control initiatives to achieve this goal. Method:We examined tobacco-related articles from NZ newspapers published between 1 November 2011 and 31 October 2012, using a coding frame to capture smoking themes, portrayal of actions and degree of support expressed for various pro-and anti-tobacco control objectives.Results: A total of 537 separate articles were obtained from national and regional newspapers. Six themes appeared in more than 5% of the total articles: Smokefree 2025; smokefree areas; pricing; tobacco industry; plain packaging; and cessation. Overall, articles on tobacco smoking were three times more likely to emphasise actions consonant with tobacco control objectives rather than against them, and to report them with a positive rather than negative tone.Conclusions: NZ tobacco control advocates can take heart from the nature and extent of coverage of tobacco control initiatives. Opportunities for further media advocacy are discussed.

Research on media framing of public policies to prevent chronic disease: A narrative synthesis

“…Coverage of general tobacco control issues was predominantly supportive (e.g. Durrant et al, 2003;Long et al, 2006;McGee et al, 2014), with only a small number of studies finding predominantly mixed/neutral coverage (Bach et al, 2013;Blake et al, 2015) or opposing coverage (Wakefield et al, 2003). However, sentiment towards specific tobacco control policies varied depending on policy type, with coverage of bans on smoking in cars (Freeman et al, 2008;Hilton et al, 2014;Patterson et al, 2015b), smoke-free parks and beaches (Moshrefzadeh et al, 2013), smokeless tobacco control (Wackowski et al, 2013), and tobacco tax (Thrasher et al, 2014) being predominantly supportive.…”

Coverage of tobacco control in Jordanian newspapers: implications for strengthening the role of news media

“…To the best of our knowledge, no other systematic efforts specific to Jordan or the region have been undertaken and shared in the literature, but similar studies from other parts of the world are available (4,(12)(13)(14). We propose that other countries of similar circumstances may benefit from our experience.…”

“…For the purpose of this study, the Cancer Control Office developed a coding scheme (described in detail in Table 1) that benefited from the experience of others (6,12,14). Building on knowledge and involvement in tobacco control, and after receiving comprehensive training on the coding scheme, a primary coder conducted coding of all logged items.…”

“…Specifically, we examined the responsiveness of newspapers to tobacco control developments, the newsworthiness of specific tobacco control topics and the tone displayed in the coverage of tobacco control topics. While there are no studies from the region to compare with, our work benefits from those conducted in other parts of the world (4,(12)(13)(14).…”

Tobacco Control Intervention: A Comparative Multimodal Discourse Analysis of Video Advertisements in China and Australia

“…The research data comprisetobacco-control public health video advertisements published in Australia and China in the recent decade, and 19 and 14 pieces of video advertisements are collected respectively as raw data and subjected to be coded to make them multimodal discourse analysis friendly.Australian advertisements were numbered A1 to A19 and Chinese advertisements were numbered C1 to C14. Coding is the first step to process the research data that the coding framework applied in this study is tailored on the basis of the established frameworks proposed by Baldry and Thibault (2006) and McGee et al (2014), and adapted according to the content themes and multimodal features of the research data.…”