What Triggered This Tracker?

We shared in our Vape News about a study on the World Vapers Alliance (WVA) website which asks the question “How biased is the media about vaping?

The study in question was written by Michael Landl (Director of the WVA) and passionate vape advocate.

michael landl

It studied articles about vaping in the media during the week 23/4/22 to 1/5/22 to determine how many were Positive, Negative or Neutral on the subject.

There were only 4 articles from the UK and 3 of those were positive and 1 Neutral.

Continuation Of The Study

I thought I would like to continue this study – so I monitored UK mainstream media including national newspaper websites and national news sites for any articles which were vaping related.

I then classified them as..

  • Positive – the article promotes vaping.
  • Negative – the article warns against vaping.
  • Neutral – either it is just a factual article or it does cover both sides of the argument equally.

Michael’s experiment was global and he found that 40% of the articles he studied were Negative and 29% were Neutral / Positive each.

This started on May 1st 2022 and the study ended 31st October 2022.

newspapers uk

Obviously this is not a scientific experiment more just to see the general opinion.

I have not included any sources behind a paywall as I am not able to fully read the article to assess whether it is positive or negative sadly.

Please also share any mainstream media articles in the UK I might have missed in the comments section!

Results

Sadly it appears that the UK news media is quite negative about vaping. Even positive stories were given a negative spin.

Also there were plenty of instances where myths were used – i.e. the long dispelled rumour of “Popcorn Lung” to create fear.

Disposables as predicted also brought their own negative press from environmental concerns to their popularity with under age vapers.

The results I found are…

Negative 104
Neutral 63
Positive 29

 

You can view all of the articles used to compile this study in their Monthly group below.

Hover your mouse / pointer over the sections in the pie chart below to see the numbers involved.

UK News Sentiment Results
  • Positive
  • Negative
  • Neutral

News Source – October

Positive

Negative

Neutral

News Source – September

This month saw the release of an NHS survey which showed youth vaping had risen slightly (3%) and Disposable vapes were more popular.

Also the report by Kings College London released this month was very positive about vaping, but a lot of the media still put a negative slant on the findings.

Positive

Negative

Neutral

News Source – August

Positive

Negative

Neutral

News Source – July

Sadly July has brought a lot of negative news mainly related to disposable vapes. The ASH Youth Vaping survey showed that youth vaping has slightly increased but more under age people are using disposable vapes – which seems to be one of the triggers.

Positive

Negative

Neutral

News Source – June

It is worth noting a lot of news articles are about the Khan Review into Tobacco control which was published June 9th 2022.

Vaping was a huge part of this review so was mentioned in articles with headlines relating to other measures in the review.

Positive

Negative

Neutral

News Source – May

Positive

Negative

Neutral

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Ecigclick Team

Ecigclick covers all the latest in vaping. The team have a combined vaping experience of over 70 years. We have personally tried and tested over 2000 vape products and aim to help you choose the right vape for your needs, whether you are a beginner or looking for a more advanced experience.

Ecigclick covers all the latest in vaping. The team have a combined vaping experience of over 70 years. We have personally tried and tested over 2000 vape products and aim to help you choose the right vape for your needs, whether you are a beginner or looking for a more advanced experience.

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