Home > A content analysis of tobacco and alcohol audio-visual content in a sample of UK reality TV programmes.

Barker, Alexander B and Britton, John and Thomson, Emily and Hunter, Abbey and Opazo Breton, Magdalena and Murray, Rachael L (2020) A content analysis of tobacco and alcohol audio-visual content in a sample of UK reality TV programmes. Journal of Public Health, 42, (3), pp. 561-569. https://doi.org/10.1093/pubmed/fdz043.

External website: https://academic.oup.com/jpubhealth/advance-articl...


Background: Exposure to tobacco and alcohol content in audio-visual media is a risk factor for smoking and alcohol use in young people. We report an analysis of tobacco and alcohol content, and estimates of population exposure to this content, in a sample of reality television programmes broadcast in the UK.

 

Methods: We used 1-minute interval coding to quantify tobacco and alcohol content in all episodes of five reality TV programmes aired between January and August 2018 (Celebrity Big Brother; Made in Chelsea; The Only Way is Essex; Geordie Shore and Love Island), and estimated population exposure using viewing data and UK population estimates.

 

Results: We coded 5219 intervals from 112 episodes. Tobacco content appeared in 110 (2%) intervals in 20 (18%) episodes, and alcohol in 2212 (42%) intervals and in all episodes. The programmes delivered approximately 214 million tobacco gross impressions to the UK population, including 47.37 million to children; and for alcohol, 4.9 billion and 580 million respectively.

 

Conclusion: Tobacco, and especially alcohol, content is common in reality TV. The popularity of these programmes with young people, and consequent exposure to tobacco and alcohol imagery, represents a potentially major driver of smoking and alcohol consumption.

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