IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v102y2014icp157-164.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Implications for alcohol minimum unit pricing advocacy: What can we learn for public health from UK newsprint coverage of key claim-makers in the policy debate?

Author

Listed:
  • Hilton, Shona
  • Wood, Karen
  • Patterson, Chris
  • Katikireddi, Srinivasa Vittal

Abstract

On May 24th 2012, Scotland passed the Alcohol (Minimum Pricing) Bill. Minimum unit pricing (MUP) is an intervention that raises the price of the cheapest alcohol to reduce alcohol consumption and related harms. There is a growing literature on industry's influence in policymaking and media representations of policies, but relatively little about frames used by key claim-makers in the public MUP policy debate. This study elucidates the dynamic interplay between key claim-makers to identify lessons for policy advocacy in the media in the UK and internationally. Content analysis was conducted on 262 articles from seven UK and three Scottish national newspapers between 1st May 2011 and 31st May 2012, retrieved from electronic databases. Advocates' and critics' constructions of the alcohol problem and MUP were examined. Advocates depicted the problem as primarily driven by cheap alcohol and marketing, while critics' constructions focused on youth binge drinkers and dependent drinkers. Advocates justified support by citing the intervention's targeted design, but critics denounced the policy as illegal, likely to encourage illicit trade, unsupported by evidence and likely to be ineffective, while harming the responsible majority, low-income consumers and businesses. Critics' arguments were consistent over time, and single statements often encompassed multiple rationales. This study presents advocates with several important lessons for promoting policies in the media. Firstly, it may be useful to shift focus away from young binge drinkers and heavy drinkers, towards population-level over-consumption. Secondly, advocates might focus on presenting the policy as part of a wider package of alcohol policies. Thirdly, emphasis on the success of recent public health policies could help portray the UK and Scotland as world leaders in tackling culturally embedded health and social problems through policy; highlighting past successes when presenting future policies may be a valuable tactic both within the UK and internationally.

Suggested Citation

  • Hilton, Shona & Wood, Karen & Patterson, Chris & Katikireddi, Srinivasa Vittal, 2014. "Implications for alcohol minimum unit pricing advocacy: What can we learn for public health from UK newsprint coverage of key claim-makers in the policy debate?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 157-164.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:102:y:2014:i:c:p:157-164
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2013.11.041
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953613006539
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.socscimed.2013.11.041?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Paul Cairney, 2011. "The New British Policy Style: From a British to a Scottish Political Tradition?," Political Studies Review, Political Studies Association, vol. 9(2), pages 208-220, May.
    2. Lemmens, P.H. & Vaeth, P.A.C. & Greenfield, T.K., 1999. "Coverage of beverage alcohol issues in the print media in the United States, 1985-1991," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 89(10), pages 1555-1560.
    3. Hilton, Shona & Hunt, Kate & Langan, Mairi & Bedford, Helen & Petticrew, Mark, 2010. "Newsprint media representations of the introduction of the HPV vaccination programme for cervical cancer prevention in the UK (2005-2008)," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 70(6), pages 942-950, March.
    4. Jim McCambridge & Ben Hawkins & Chris Holden, 2013. "Industry Use of Evidence to Influence Alcohol Policy: A Case Study of Submissions to the 2008 Scottish Government Consultation," PLOS Medicine, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(4), pages 1-6, April.
    5. Elizabeth Shanahan & Mark McBeth & Paul Hathaway & Ruth Arnell, 2008. "Conduit or contributor? The role of media in policy change theory," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 41(2), pages 115-138, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. MacLean, Sarah & Room, Robin & Cook, Megan & Mugavin, Janette & Callinan, Sarah, 2022. "Affordances of home drinking in accounts from light and heavy drinkers," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 296(C).
    2. Eastmure, Elizabeth & Cummins, Steven & Sparks, Leigh, 2020. "Non-market strategy as a framework for exploring commercial involvement in health policy: A primer," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 262(C).
    3. Christina H Buckton & Chris Patterson & Lirije Hyseni & S Vittal Katikireddi & Ffion Lloyd-Williams & Alex Elliott-Green & Simon Capewell & Shona Hilton, 2018. "The palatability of sugar-sweetened beverage taxation: A content analysis of newspaper coverage of the UK sugar debate," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(12), pages 1-15, December.
    4. Tatiana Breder Emerich & Aline Guio Cavaca & Edson Theodoro Santos-Neto & Victor Israel Gentilli & Adauto Emmerich Oliveira, 2017. "Media Valuations of Health Journalism and Health Dynamics in Brazilian Printed Media," International Journal of Social Science Studies, Redfame publishing, vol. 5(1), pages 31-42, January.
    5. Srinivasa Vittal Katikireddi & Shona Hilton & Chris Bonell & Lyndal Bond, 2014. "Understanding the Development of Minimum Unit Pricing of Alcohol in Scotland: A Qualitative Study of the Policy Process," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(3), pages 1-10, March.
    6. Julien Mercille, 2017. "Media Coverage of Alcohol Issues: A Critical Political Economy Framework—A Case Study from Ireland," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 14(6), pages 1-13, June.
    7. Fiona O’May & Jan Gill & Heather Black & Cheryl Rees & Jonathan Chick & Barbara McPake, 2016. "Heavy Drinkers’ Perspectives on Minimum Unit Pricing for Alcohol in Scotland," SAGE Open, , vol. 6(3), pages 21582440166, July.
    8. Thornton, Mary & Hawkins, Benjamin, 2017. "Between a rock and a hard place: Economic expansion and social responsibility in UK media discourses on the global alcohol industry," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 175(C), pages 169-176.
    9. Molly Thomas-Meyer & Oliver Mytton & Jean Adams, 2017. "Public responses to proposals for a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages: A thematic analysis of online reader comments posted on major UK news websites," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(11), pages 1-18, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Julien Mercille, 2017. "Media Coverage of Alcohol Issues: A Critical Political Economy Framework—A Case Study from Ireland," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 14(6), pages 1-13, June.
    2. Scott, C. & Hawkins, B. & Knai, C., 2017. "Food and beverage product reformulation as a corporate political strategy," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 172(C), pages 37-45.
    3. Hannes R. Stephan, 2020. "Shaping the Scope of Conflict in Scotland’s Fracking Debate: Conflict Management and the Narrative Policy Framework," Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Organization, vol. 37(1), pages 64-91, January.
    4. Julia Stafford & Tanya Chikritzhs & Hannah Pierce & Simone Pettigrew, 2021. "An evaluation of the evidence submitted to Australian alcohol advertising policy consultations," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(12), pages 1-16, December.
    5. Eastmure, Elizabeth & Cummins, Steven & Sparks, Leigh, 2020. "Non-market strategy as a framework for exploring commercial involvement in health policy: A primer," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 262(C).
    6. Berg, Annukka & Hukkinen, Janne I., 2011. "The paradox of growth critique: Narrative analysis of the Finnish sustainable consumption and production debate," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 151-160.
    7. Amy Rudge & Kristen Foley & Belinda Lunnay & Emma R. Miller & Samantha Batchelor & Paul R. Ward, 2021. "How Are the Links between Alcohol Consumption and Breast Cancer Portrayed in Australian Newspapers?: A Paired Thematic and Framing Media Analysis," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(14), pages 1-18, July.
    8. Aksel Ersoy, 2016. "The spread of coproduction: How the concept reached the northernmost city in the UK," Local Economy, London South Bank University, vol. 31(3), pages 410-423, May.
    9. Christina H Buckton & Chris Patterson & Lirije Hyseni & S Vittal Katikireddi & Ffion Lloyd-Williams & Alex Elliott-Green & Simon Capewell & Shona Hilton, 2018. "The palatability of sugar-sweetened beverage taxation: A content analysis of newspaper coverage of the UK sugar debate," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(12), pages 1-15, December.
    10. Adam Dinsmore & Liz Allen & Kevin Dolby, 2014. "Alternative Perspectives on Impact: The Potential of ALMs and Altmetrics to Inform Funders about Research Impact," PLOS Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(11), pages 1-4, November.
    11. Simon Spedding, 2016. "Open Access Publishing of Health Research: Does Open Access Publishing Facilitate the Translation of Research into Health Policy and Practice?," Publications, MDPI, vol. 4(1), pages 1-9, January.
    12. Rowbotham, Samantha & McKinnon, Merryn & Marks, Leah & Hawe, Penelope, 2019. "Research on media framing of public policies to prevent chronic disease: A narrative synthesis," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 237(C), pages 1-1.
    13. Thornton, Mary & Hawkins, Benjamin, 2017. "Between a rock and a hard place: Economic expansion and social responsibility in UK media discourses on the global alcohol industry," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 175(C), pages 169-176.
    14. S. Cowlishaw, 2017. "Legitimate concerns about industry involvement in gambling research: response to Delfabbro and King (2017)," International Gambling Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(2), pages 343-348, May.
    15. Ryane Straus, 2011. "Citizens’ use of policy symbols and frames," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 44(1), pages 13-34, March.
    16. Juha Peltomaa, 2018. "Drumming the Barrels of Hope? Bioeconomy Narratives in the Media," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(11), pages 1-14, November.
    17. Kate Crowley & Brian W. Head, 2017. "The enduring challenge of ‘wicked problems’: revisiting Rittel and Webber," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 50(4), pages 539-547, December.
    18. Lesch, Matthew & McCambridge, Jim, 2021. "Waiting for the wave: Political leadership, policy windows, and alcohol policy change in Ireland," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 282(C).
    19. Laura McAllister, 2015. "Immature relationships in the new multi-level United Kingdom: perspectives from Wales," Public Money & Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(1), pages 31-38, January.
    20. Nathalie Burlone & Rebecca Grace Richmond, 2018. "Between morality and rationality: framing end-of-life care policy through narratives," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 51(3), pages 313-334, September.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:102:y:2014:i:c:p:157-164. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.