The Targeting of African Americans by the Tobacco Industry: Results from a Content Analysis of Cigarette Advertisements

Purpose: Targeted cigarette advertising of the African-American community began in the 1940s with advertisements featuring African-American models and sports figures. During the height of the civil rights and black pride movements in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the tobacco industry flooded periodicals popular with the African-American community with cigarette advertisements which focused upon these movements. Despite significant decreases in the prevalence of cigarette smoking in the African-American community over the past decade, the targeted advertising of cigarettes to the African-American community remains a critical issue given the large disparity in lung cancer incidence and lung cancer death rates between African-American men and white men in the United States. The authors present the results of several analyses comparing the thematic content of cigarette advertisements in periodicals (i.e., Ebony, Jet) with large African-American readerships to advertisements in general readership magazines (i.e., Time, Newsweek).

Methods: Four research assistants examined every issue of 14 general readership magazines and four magazines with large African-American readerships for cigarette advertisements. The research assistants also reviewed and coded several elements comprising each cigarette advertisement such as the brand advertised, the slogan of the ad, the size of the ad, and the thematic content of the advertisement. We focused on the following themes for this study: Economic (brand is more economical), Health (these cigarettes are better for you), and Sophistication (smoking is a sophisticated, high class activity). Up to three themes per cigarette advertisement could have been coded by the research assistants. In order to ensure each of the research assistants were applying the same criteria when coding the cigarette advertisements each advertisement was reviewed and coded by two different research assistants. This double data entry system minimized data entry errors and ensured the same criteria were being used to code the content of ads. For these analyses, we examined cigarette advertising between 1950 and 2002 (N= 69,304 advertisements). Bivariate chi-square analyses and multivariate logistic regression were used to examine whether the thematic content of cigarette advertisements in African-American oriented periodicals were different relative to advertisements in general readership magazines. We weighted each advertisement by the inverse of the number themes per advertisement to account for advertisements with more than one theme.

Results: After controlling for the magazine type (i.e., women's, men's, entertainment, and news) and magazine year, results of the logistic regression analyses revealed advertisements in magazines with high African-American readerships were more likely to have health and sophistication themes relative to general readership periodicals. No difference was observed for economic-related themes.

Implications: The results of this study have implications for the development of social policy (i.e., the restriction of tobacco advertising and promotion) as well for community-based interventions designed to curb point-of-sale advertising of tobacco. These results also demonstrate the necessity of viewing tobacco control as a social justice issue.