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Examination of a Global Prohibition Regime

A Comparative Study of Japanese and US Newspapers on the Issue of Tobacco Regulation

Eugene S. Pulliam School of Journalism, Butler University, 4600 Sunset Ave., Indianapolis, IN 46208, USA, rcampbel{at}butler.edu

Hajime Sato

Department of Public Health, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, Hongo 7-3-1, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan, hsato{at}m.u-tokyo.ac.jp

/ Important public health issues have become entangled in trade regulation, where one country's policies may have detrimental effects on other nations. News documents are critical historical records to examine such actions. There appear to be no studies that have employed matched international news documents on a particular public health issue. This article reports on a content analysis that compared tobacco policy articles in two major newspapers each in Japan and the US for a six-year period defining the context during which the WHO negotiated the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control with the international constituencies. The findings indicate significant differences between US and Japanese newspapers in sources, arguments and advocacy bias. Arguments about the policy itself, including effectiveness, legality and jurisdiction, were important predictors of positive bias in the Japanese sample, indicating that `health and harm' is not the most important argument promoting tobacco control via media advocacy. The implications for effective tobacco policy campaigns are reported.

Key Words: agenda setting • content analysis • international comparative study • Japan—US studies • mass media • media advocacy • public health • public policy • smoking • tobacco control

International Communication Gazette, Vol. 71, No. 3, 161-179 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/1748048508100911


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