Tobacco Control Research Group (Partner in Stopping Tobacco Organisations and Products), Department for Health, University of Bath, Bath, United Kingdom.
Front Public Health. 2022 Oct 18;10:958354. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2022.958354. eCollection 2022.
Influencing public perception is a key way in which all transnational corporations (TNCs) maintain market dominance and political power. Transnational tobacco companies (TTCs) have a long history of leveraging narratives to serve commercial ambitions. The global reach of these companies' narratives has been highlighted as a challenge in combatting public health problems caused by tobacco. The corporate power of TTCs is carefully curated, and their narratives play an important role in the setting of governance dynamics at local, national and transnational levels. This qualitative work explores and compares the language used by British American Tobacco (BAT) and Philip Morris International (PMI) around harm, harm reduction and terms used to refer to newer nicotine and tobacco products, including electronic cigarettes and heated tobacco products. We systematically examine framings used by these two TTCs through company reports published between 2011 and 2021. Qualitative coding was carried out by four coders, according to a protocol developed specifically for this work. We firstly identified the presence of pre-selected keywords and then assigned chunks of text containing those key words to one or more associated frames drawn from Boydstun's policy frames codebook (2013). Qualitative coding identified the most common frames from Boydstun's codebook and thematic analysis highlighted three overarching themes. The most common frames assigned were "capacity and resources", "health and safety" and "economic" frames. The overarching themes were individualization, normalization, and regulation. These themes capture how both BAT and PMI use particular framings to downplay the role of TTCs in the perpetuation of population- and individual-level harms related to tobacco use. They seek to normalize their role in public discussions of health policy, to cast themselves as instrumental in the redress of tobacco-related inequalities and shift responsibility for the continuation of tobacco-product use onto individual consumers. These tactics are problematic for the effective and impartial development and implementation of local, national and international tobacco control agendas.
影响公众认知是所有跨国公司（TNCs）维持市场主导地位和政治权力的关键途径。跨国烟草公司（TTCs）长期以来一直利用叙事来服务商业野心。这些公司叙事的全球影响力突显了在应对烟草引起的公共卫生问题方面的挑战。TTCs 的公司权力经过精心策划，其叙事在地方、国家和跨国层面的治理动态设定中发挥着重要作用。这项定性研究探讨并比较了英美烟草（BAT）和菲利普莫里斯国际（PMI）在危害、减少危害以及用于指代新型尼古丁和烟草产品（包括电子烟和加热烟草产品）的术语方面使用的语言。我们系统地审查了这两家 TTC 公司在 2011 年至 2021 年期间发布的公司报告中使用的框架。四位编码员根据专门为此项工作制定的协议进行了定性编码。我们首先确定了预选关键字的存在，然后将包含这些关键字的文本块分配给从 Boydstun 的政策框架代码簿（2013 年）中提取的一个或多个相关框架。定性编码确定了 Boydstun 代码簿中最常见的框架，主题分析突出了三个总体主题。分配最多的框架是“能力和资源”、“健康和安全”和“经济”框架。总体主题是个体化、规范化和监管。这些主题捕捉了 BAT 和 PMI 如何使用特定的框架来淡化 TTCs 在延续与烟草使用相关的人口和个人层面危害方面的作用。他们试图将自己在健康政策公共讨论中的角色正常化，将自己视为解决与烟草相关的不平等问题的工具，并将继续使用烟草产品的责任转移到个别消费者身上。这些策略对地方、国家和国际烟草控制议程的有效和公正制定和实施构成了问题。
