title: Framing the nicotine debate: a cultural approach to risk.
abstract: This study examined Congressional testimony concerning regulation of tobacco advertising by 3 policy factions representing industry, government, and lay activists. On the basis of the cultural theory of risk, policy disputants were divided into entrepreneurial, bureaucratic, and egalitarian communities, each with a distinct cosmology that impedes discourse among the groups. The authors examined ways in which the 3 policy factions framed the tobacco advertising issues to see the extent to which such unique cosmologies were expressed or whether mutual frames might signal opportunities for negotiation among the interest groups. Major themes in the testimony were identified through semantic network analysis and clustering of associated words that revealed discourse patterns peculiar to each group and reflective of their cultural biases toward health risk. Semantic network analysis can be a tool to clarify these presuppositions and unmask relations among factions, thereby bridging policy solutions across interest groups.
authors.affiliation: Department of Journalism, Public Relations and Advertising, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA 19122, USA. murphyp@astro.temple.edu
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Murphy
mesh_terms: D000329:Advertising / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D005104:Expert Testimony; D006801:Humans; D009538:Nicotine; D010565:Persuasive Communication; D011050:Policy Making; D012309:Risk-Taking; D000074606:Smoking Prevention; D012945:Social Values; D019460:Tobacco Industry / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D014481:United States
chemical_list: D009538:Nicotine