Do Longitudinal Trends in Tobacco 21-Related Media Coverage Correlate with Policy Support? an Exploratory Analysis Using Supervised and Unsupervised Machine Learning Methods

ABSTRACT

Media coverage can impact support for health policies and, ultimately, compliance with those policies. Prior research found consistent, high support for Tobacco 21 policies, which raise the minimum legal age of tobacco purchase to 21, among adults and nonsmoking youth. However, a recent study found support (i.e., agreement with the statement: “The legal age to buy tobacco cigarettes should be increased from 18 to 21”) among 13–20-year-old smokers increased from 2014 until mid-2016 and then declined steadily through mid-2017. To assess whether media coverage could be related to young smokers’ changing support, we conducted an exploratory content analysis to identify texts about Tobacco 21 in a large corpus of tobacco texts (N = 135,691) published in four popular media sources from 2014 to 2017. For this content analysis, we developed a novel methodological approach that combined supervised and unsupervised machine learning methods and could be useful in other areas of communication research. We found that the prevalence of Tobacco 21 media coverage and Tobacco 21 support among young smokers exhibited similar temporal patterns for much of the study period. These findings highlight the need for continued research into the effects of media coverage on Tobacco 21 support among young smokers, a group that must comply with Tobacco 21 policies in order to ensure maximum effectiveness. This research is of particular utility following the 2019 passage of a federal Tobacco 21 regulation, as the public health impact of this regulation could be limited by low public support, and thus low rates of policy compliance.

Notes

1. It is worth noting that an article’s valence toward tobacco use in general may not reflect its valence toward a particular tobacco control policy. For example, while prior studies investigating the valence of tobacco-related news media content have found that such coverage is primarily against the use of tobacco, media coverage of a specific tobacco control policy often presents mixed valence toward that particular policy, including arguments both for and against the policy in question (Long et al., 2006; Myers et al., 2019, 2017).

2. We chose to conduct analyses at the quarterly level rather than at smaller time intervals (e.g., monthly), as there were very few Tobacco 21 articles published in each month of the study period, and very few smokers aged 13-20 who were surveyed during each month. Because of this, our monthly measures of both Tobacco 21 media coverage and Tobacco 21 policy support among young smokers were unstable; our quarterly measures of these variables were more stable.

3. When collapsing to the quarterly level, data collected before July 1, 2014 were omitted because we only began collecting media data in mid-May 2014 and survey data in mid-June 2014. Because we did not have complete data for the second quarter of 2014, we did not include it in our analyses.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) [P50-CA179546]; National Cancer Institute [P50-CA179546].