Representations of electronic cigarettes in Chinese media

Abstract

BackgroundElectronic cigarettes (E-cigarettes) have become a debated issue for tobacco control over recent years. In this study we investigate how Chinese newspapers have covered E-cigarettes over the past ten years.MethodsThe study analyses the salience, patterns and content of news articles pertaining to E-cigarettes in regional and national Chinese outlets. A total of 476 articles are examined via content analysis and supervised automatic text analysis. The manual content analysis generates a coding scheme, which is then validated and applied to machine learning. The whole research methodology demonstrates satisfying human-human and human-to-computer reliabilities.ResultsThe study reveals that E-cigarettes have not received enough attention in terms of its salience in the media, though the amount of coverage has been growing. A large share of the articles is published around May of each year – which is when the No Tobacco Day of the WHO takes place. The results point to four major themes on E-cigarettes: nicotine/constituents/features, tobacco control/regulation, children’s use of E-cigarettes, and tobacco market/industry.ConclusionsOverall, E-cigarettes have not been a topic at the top of media agenda; however, we have identified a considerable growth of coverage about the potential concerns regarding young people’s adoption of E-cigarettes advocated by parents and educators.

Electronic cigarette related topics with conflicting arguments in Chinese newspapers

“…In Chinese newspapers between 2004-2019, the most frequently reported e-cigarette related topics with conflicting arguments were around health impact, including health impact of e-cigarettes, relative health effects of e-cigarettes compared to cigarettes, impact of secondhand aerosol exposure, and efficacy of e-cigarettes as smoking cessation aids. This finding aligns with research on e-cigarette media coverage in many countries [32][33][34][35] . However, while there was a relative balance between positive arguments and negative arguments on e-cigarette efficacy of smoking cessation and impact of secondhand aerosol exposure (reflected in the number of news articles), the dominant arguments related to the health impact of e-cigarettes in the study period were 'e-cigarettes are harmful' and 'e-cigarettes are less harmful than cigarettes'.…”

Health Communication through Chinese Media on E-Cigarette: A Topic Modeling Approach

“…Moreover, news agencies have digital news platforms or social media accounts, releasing e-cigarette news through these channels. Although some scholars have noticed limitations of newspaper and their influences in China and stated that e-cigarettes have not grown into the top topic for media agenda [27], however, the fact is that the agenda will flow from traditional media to digital media, and online discussion for e-cigarettes will be formed in the new media era. News media continue to guiding public opinions at present; thus, they should continue to play the role of a medium to inform and persuade public.…”

“…Another research method, the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), used in computational communication, can realize mass text analysis in a data-driven approach and extract frameworks and topics from a large amount of news texts. Besides, the prominence of e-cigarettes in the media has not been given enough attention [27]. Some relevant studies are listed in Appendix A, Table A2.…”

Smoking burden, MPOWER, future tobacco control and real-world challenges in China: reflections on the WHO report on the global tobacco epidemic 2021

“…Furthermore, electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) or the electronic nicotine delivery system (ENDS), emerging in recent years, have also challenged tobacco control. In China, e-cigarettes use is increasing while has not received enough attention regarding its hazards and potential interventions on restriction and cessation (26). A survey from five Chinese cities showed that men, young adults with higher levels of education, and current smokers were more likely to be aware of and use ENDS (27).…”

“…© Translational Lung Cancer Research. All rights reserved.Transl Lung Cancer Res 2022;11(1):117-121 | https://dx.doi.org/10.21037/tlcr-[22][23][24][25][26][27] …”