Analyzing newspaper articles and television news, we explore how American news media have framed the issue of obesity. More specifically, we analyze the way the media present the question of who is responsible for causing and fixing the problem. Our data reveal that over the last 10 years, mentions of personal causes and solutions significantly have outnumbered societal attributions of responsibility. Recently, however, a balance was established between individualistic and societal attributions of responsibility. Mentions of societal causes and solutions have increased considerably, whereas decreasing numbers of personal solutions have appeared in the media. Findings also indicate that television news is more likely than newspapers to mention personal solutions, but less likely to attribute the responsibility to society.

i his study examined fftf attribute agenda-setting/i/ncfwtt of the media, which refers to significant correspondence between prominent issue attributes in the media and the agenda of attributes among audiences. An opinion surve}/ on a local issue and a content analysis of a local newspaper revealed that, by covering certain issue aspects more prominently, the media increase the salience of these aspects among audience members. We also found an important outcome of attribute agenda setting, attribute priming effects. Findings indicated that issue attributes salient in the media were functioning as significant dimensions of issue evaluation among audience members. This study concluded that the media, by emphasizing certain attributes of an issue, tell us "how to think about" this issue as well as "what to think about."

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Public sentiment in the United States has been evolving against cigarette smoking. Providing support for stronger tobacco control legislation, unfavorable public sentiment has contributed to the decrease in the size of the smoking population in this country. The present study hypothesizes that the unfavorable public sentiment may also discourage cigarette smoking by creating an unfavorable "smoking climate" in which smoking is socially rejected as a deviant behavior. Analyses of several secondary data-sets provided evidence that smoking rates are lower in the states where the public holds relatively unfavorable sentiment toward cigarette smoking. The relationship between public sentiment and smoking rates was significant even after controlling for the effects of state-level tobacco control measures, such as cigarette taxes and smoking restrictions in private workplaces and restaurants. We also found that smokers who have experienced unfavorable public sentiment are more willing to quit smoking than those who have not, supporting the hypothesized effects of antismoking public sentiment on smoking behaviors.

This study explores how the American news media frame the poverty issue, looking at the way the media present its causes and solutions. It also examines the notion of frame building, exploring the factors that may influence the media's selective uses of certain frames. Media attributions of responsibility are largely societal, focusing on the causes and solutions at the social rather than personal level. Liberal newspapers made more references than conservative papers to social causes and solutions. Television news is slightly less likely than newspapers to make social-level attributions.