‘The secret shame’: a content analysis of online news reporting of a celebrity admitting smoking while pregnant
Beverley Carroll A B and Becky Freeman A
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations
A School of Public Health, Sydney Medical School, University of Sydney, c/o 226a, Edward Ford Building (A27), University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia.
B Corresponding author. Email: bcarroll@uni.sydney.edu.au
Health Promotion Journal of Australia 26(1) 4-9 https://doi.org/10.1071/HE14069
Submitted: 28 July 2014 Accepted: 2 December 2014 Published: 16 March 2015
Journal Compilation © Australian Health Promotion Association 2015
Abstract
Issue addressed: Around one in 10 Australian women report that they smoke while pregnant, and this may be a significant underestimation. In 2013, Australian celebrity Chrissie Swan announced publicly that she had been smoking during her pregnancy, generating substantial media coverage. This study sought to identify the main themes in the reporting of the ‘Swan pregnant and admitting smoking’ story by online news media.
Methods: Between 6 February 2013 and 18 February 2013 inclusively, a content analysis was conducted of Australian online news items using the keywords: ‘Chrissie Swan smoking’, and ‘Chrissie Swan pregnant and smoking’. News items were coded for nine themes.
Results: A total of 124 items were identified. The most frequent themes were: ‘celebrity story’ (90.32%) and ‘societal judgement of pregnant smokers’ (69.35%). Less than one-half (45.97%) of the news items included ‘quitting is hard’ content and only 29.03% of the news items included ‘smoking and health’ content. Specific quit-referral content was found in only 13.71% of the news items.
Conclusions: There was a missed opportunity to promote positive, non-judgemental smoking and pregnancy messages and health information that support pregnant women to quit smoking.
So what?: Health promotion strategies are needed to build capacity in advocacy to promote positive health messages and counter societal judgement of pregnant smokers. Formative research into the use of celebrities and other influential women to promote positive empowering messages should be carried out and incorporated in future health promotion campaigns to improve pregnant women’s ability to quit smoking.
Key words: advocacy, media, tobacco.
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