Alcohol and Tobacco Advertising in Black and General Audience Newspapers: Targeting with Message Cues?

Abstract

This study content analyzed 928 tobacco- and alcohol-related advertisements from a 3-year national sample of Black (n = 24) and general audience (n = 11) newspapers from 24 U.S. cities. The authors compared the frequency of tobacco and alcohol product and control advertising in Black versus general audience newspapers, as well as the presence of 5 message cues: model ethnicity, presence of health official, referral to resources, personal behavior mobilization, and localization. Results within health issues show that Black newspapers had more alcohol product advertising than did general audience newspapers. In contrast, Black newspapers had less alcohol and tobacco control advertising than general audience newspapers. Black newspapers’ tobacco/alcohol product advertisements had more African American models than did general audience newspapers’ tobacco/alcohol advertising, whereas general audience newspapers’ tobacco control advertisements were significantly more likely to feature public health officials than ads in Black newspapers. Fewer message cues such as personal behavior mobilization, referral to resources, and localization were present in Black versus general audience newspapers. Results suggest that Black newspapers may have greater dependency than do general audience newspapers on these risk-related advertisements that target African American consumers. Given the current advertising environment, public health initiatives are needed to counter unhealthy alcohol product advertising messages that target vulnerable populations.

Notes

¹Smoking and excessive alcohol use presents a disparate burden to the African American population. Tobacco use is the leading cause of death in the United States (Mokdad, Marks, Stroup, & Gerberding, 2004) and the health effects of smoking on the U.S. population appear to place a particular burden on poor and minority communities. Although there is evidence that African Americans may smoke and drink less than the general population does, they suffer higher rates of tobacco- and alcohol-related health problems, such as alcoholic cirrhosis (Caetano & Clark, 2008; Galvan & Caetano, 2003; Kochanek et al., 2004). Independently, alcohol misuse is the third leading cause of preventable death in the United States (Mokdad et al.), with the Centers for Disease Control (2004, p. 866) reporting excessive alcohol use resulting in 75,766 alcohol attributable deaths annually. Moreover, there is a synergism between tobacco and alcohol consumption that increases individual risk of cancer (American Cancer Society, 2008, p. 15). Lung cancer “kills more African Americans than any other cancer,” with an estimated 16,700 deaths from lung cancer along in 2007 (American Cancer Society, 2007, p. 12).

²One Black newspaper was added to the initial sample in substitution for another Black newspaper in the same community that did not regularly send newspapers to the investigators. One general audience newspaper lacked alcohol and tobacco advertisements, and it was not included as part of the final sample disposition. These irregular newspapers were also not included in estimates for newspaper length reported herein.

³This approach meant that for each month one constructed week of advertisements were selected from 36 months of daily general audience newspapers advertisements to efficiently establish a means to generalize from the sample to the general audience newspaper population.

*Insufficient sample of observations of interest to satisfy the standard cell count requirement for bivariate analysis.

*Insufficient sample of observations of interest to satisfy the expected cell count requirement for bivariate analysis.