The origins of personal responsibility rhetoric in news coverage of the tobacco industry

P. Mejia, L. Dorfman, A. Cheyne, L. Nixon, L. Friedman, M. Gottlieb and R. Daynard

American Journal of Public Health, 2014, vol. 104, issue 6, 1048-1051

Abstract: The tobacco industry consistently frames smoking as a personal issue rather than the responsibility of cigarette companies. To identify when personal responsibility framing became amajor element of the tobacco industry's discourse, we analyzed news coverage from 1966 to 1991. Industry representatives began to regularly use these arguments in 1977. By the mid 1980s, this frame dominated the industry's public arguments. This chronology illustrates that the tobacco industry's use of personal responsibility rhetoric in public preceded the ascension of personal responsibility rhetoric commonly associated with the Reagan Administration in the 1980s.

Keywords: article; history; human; mass medium; methodology; psychological aspect; publication; smoking; social behavior; tobacco industry, History, 20th Century; History, 21st Century; Humans; Mass Media; Newspapers; Smoking; Social Responsibility; Tobacco Industry (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aph:ajpbhl:10.2105/ajph.2013.301754_7

DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.2013.301754

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