Representations of electronic cigarettes in Chinese media

BACKGROUND: Electronic cigarettes (E-cigarettes) have become a debated issue for tobacco control over recent years. In this study we investigate how Chinese newspapers have covered E-cigarettes over the past ten years. METHODS: The study analyses the salience, patterns and content of news articles pertaining to E-cigarettes in regional and national Chinese outlets. A total of 476 articles are examined via content analysis and supervised automatic text analysis. The manual content analysis generates a coding scheme, which is then validated and applied to machine learning. The whole research methodology demonstrates satisfying human-human and human-to-computer reliabilities. RESULTS: The study reveals that E-cigarettes have not received enough attention in terms of its salience in the media, though the amount of coverage has been growing. A large share of the articles is published around May of each year – which is when the No Tobacco Day of the WHO takes place. The results point to four major themes on E-cigarettes: nicotine/constituents/features, tobacco control/regulation, children’s use of E-cigarettes, and tobacco market/industry. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, E-cigarettes have not been a topic at the top of media agenda; however, we have identified a considerable growth of coverage about the potential concerns regarding young people’s adoption of E-cigarettes advocated by parents and educators.