Pick Your Poison: Framing the Public Health Implications of Electronic Cigarettes

Abstract

Electronic cigarette smoking has become increasingly popular in the United States over the past decade. As electronic cigarette use has increased, a lively debate has emerged over the implications of electronic cigarettes on American public health. From one perspective, electronic cigarettes do not contain the toxic chemicals in cigarette tar, potentially providing a harm-reduction mechanism to millions of smokers in America. From another perspective, millions of young people are now using electronic cigarettes. Young people using electronic cigarettes in increasing rates is particular troubling, as this trend follows a historical decline in traditional cigarette smoking among adolescents. Since there are two distinct sides to the debate over the public health implications of electronic cigarettes, this thesis seeks to analyze the issue framing of electronic cigarettes. Particularly, the aim of this thesis is to understand how Ivy League newspapers depict the issue of electronic cigarette vaping. It is hypothesized that three major frames will dominate Ivy League newspaper articles about electronic cigarettes: Regulation, Kids/Youth, and Prevalence on Campus. Furthermore, this thesis hypothesizes that coverage across the Ivy League will not be uniform. Instead, there will be substantial variation in electronic cigarette issue framing across institutions. Using a sample of newspaper articles yielded from the eight Ivy League newspaper online searchable archives, a content analysis was performed on 76 articles. These articles were coded for the prevalence of nine potential issue frames in three frame categories: e-cigarette control, e- cigarette interest, and college setting. This study determined that the most frequent frames utilized in Ivy League newspapers were within the e-cigarette control category. The findings of this study point to an increased awareness of the dangers of electronic cigarettes among young people.