Turning "smoking man" images around: portrayals of smoking in men's magazines as a blueprint for smoking cessation campaigns.
Published scholarship documents the prevalence and health risks of smoking among men. There is also a rich tradition of studying the normative influences of the media in constructing and propagating images of healthy/unhealthy behaviors such as smoking. To understand the construction of these media-propagated smoking images toward male audiences, this article studies all advertising and editorial content of 3 major men's magazines for 2001 using rhetorical and content analyses. The emergent themes construct the smoking man as sensual, in another place, independent, and mysterious. The authors recommend turning around these themes of the masculine "smoking man" for the purpose of strategic media planning and developing message-targeting guidelines for smoking cessation and prevention messages directed at men.
Dutta
Mohan J
MJ
Department of Communication, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA. mdutta@purdue.edu
Boyd
Josh
J
D000329:Advertising; D001294:Attitude to Health; D015706:Bibliometrics; D054626:Consumer Health Information / Q000592:standards / Q000639:trends; D035081:Editorial Policies; D015438:Health Behavior; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D054526:Men's Health; D010506:Periodicals as Topic / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D010565:Persuasive Communication; D012907:Smoking / Q000523:psychology*; D016540:Smoking Cessation / Q000379:methods / Q000523:psychology*; D000074606:Smoking Prevention