Role of Digital and New Media in Influencing Trajectories of Teenage Smoking

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSii

DECLARATIONiii

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION1

Background to the Study1

Rationale of the Study2

Aims and Objectives3

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW4

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY7

Research Design7

REFERENCES8

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

Background to the Study

The tobacco industry spends billions of dollars every year on promoting cigarette smoking in the United States. Research shows that this enormous marketing budget is well justified in that exposure to tobacco advertising influences smoking initiation among adolescents. This is because tobacco advertising has been so successful; another type of advertising campaign has emerged to counter the effects of these tobacco ads, known as counter-marketing (Teenage Research Unlimited 2009, pp.23). In fact, there is now emerging evidence that anti-tobacco mass media campaigns are effective in reducing adolescent tobacco use. However, more research is needed to understand what aspects of media campaigns are most effective and how these campaigns interact with adolescents' smoking status to produce positive behavioral changes (World Health Organization 2011, pp.12-16). Therefore, this study focuses on how smoking status interacts with the thematic approaches of the ads to influence attitudes about smoking and intentions to smoke.

A teenager, who smokes regularly, will die from a smoking related disease. Given the extent of harm caused by tobacco use, many actions have been taken to prevent smoking, smoking cessation support and protect nonsmokers from tobacco smoke in the environment. Tobacco prevention aims to reduce initiation to product and the establishment of addiction (Wakefield & Chaloupka 2000, 177-186). This is an ambitious goal since the initiation and smoking habit occurs mostly in adolescence, period characterized, among other things, the need for experimentation.

In addition to premature death and health problems, smoking in adolescence has also been related to several behavioral and psychological problems. For example, adolescent smoking has been linked to acting out behaviors and delinquency, engaging in unprotected sex (CDC, 1994), depression, negative attitudes about body image ((Sly & Ray 2001a, 9-15), and 3 alcohol use ((Johnston 2009, pp.15)). Although cigarette smoking may not cause these additional risky behaviors, it appears that smoking is associated with numerous behavioral and psychological problems. Recently, smoking has been thought of as a potential gateway to other drugs such as marijuana and cocaine.

If this goal required intervening with the young person himself, researchers agree more the importance of acting on the environment in which it operates. In this regard, the new media can play a role in influencing the mind set of young people in creating awareness among them to stop smoking as it is very dangerous for health. Since, the new media has a profound influence on the youth, teenagers can be convinced and a considerable number of teenagers could be stopped from smoking and puffing their own life away.

Rationale of the Study

Since many mass media prevention campaigns are developed in conjunction with other tobacco control interventions (e.g. school-based and community-based programs), it is often difficult to disentangle the specific effects of the media campaigns. However, Goldman and Glantz (1998) report that there is considerable evidence ...