Recognize & Resist: An Online Health Intervention to Promote Writing About Sexual Consent and Egalitarian Gender Roles Among One Direction Fanfiction Writers

This paper focuses on the development and feasibility of a digitally-based educational intervention, titled Recognize & Resist (R&R), for writers of One Direction (1D) fanfiction on Wattpad.com. The goal of R&R is to reduce the prevalence of social norms that are supportive of sexual violence within 1D fanfiction. 1D fanfictions, or fictional romance stories written by fans of this British boy band, have hundreds of millions of views on Wattpad.com. Formative research has found that social norms supportive of sexual violence are prevalent in 1D fanfictions and that some authors have internalized these norms. R&R aims to motivate 1D fanfiction writers to highlight sexual consent and egalitarian gender roles in their writing. To evaluate the intervention's feasibility, 15 1D fanfiction authors completed a survey and participated in an interview or focus group. Results demonstrate R&R's feasibility, with high ratings of its acceptability and demand. Insights from the interviews and focus groups provide suggestions for revising R&R before rigorously evaluating its efficacy. Additionally, results demonstrate the utility of using popular culture as a vehicle for attitude-change regarding sensitive health issues.

Parents' stigmatizing beliefs about the HPV vaccine and their association with information seeking behavior and vaccination communication behaviors

Parents' stigmatizing beliefs about the HPV vaccine, such as beliefs that it promotes adolescent sexual activity, constitute a notable barrier to vaccine uptake. The purpose of this study is to describe the associations between parents' stigmatizing beliefs about the HPV vaccine, psychosocial antecedents to vaccination, and parents' intentions to vaccinate their children. Parents of vaccine-eligible children (n = 512) were surveyed in a large urban clinical network. Results indicate that two stigmatizing beliefs were significantly associated with self-efficacy in talking with a doctor about the HPV vaccine. Believing that the vaccine would make a child more likely to have sex was associated with citing social media as a source of information about the vaccine. Other stigmatizing beliefs were either associated with citing healthcare professionals as sources of information about the vaccine, or they were not significantly associated with any information source. This finding suggests that stigmatizing beliefs might discourage parents from seeking out information about the vaccine. This study is significant because it further highlights the importance of doctor recommendations to all patients at recommended ages; doctor visits may represent one of the few opportunities to normalize HPV vaccination and address parents' stigmatizing beliefs about the HPV vaccine.

What Cigarillo Companies are Putting on Instagram: A Content Analysis of Swisher Sweets' Marketing from 2013 to 2020

INTRODUCTION

Tobacco marketing includes text and visual content, which conveys important meaning to consumers and influences use. Little is known about the marketing tactics used by a popular brand of cigarillos on social media to promote their products, including their visual design.

METHODS

A content analysis was conducted to analyze text and visuals for all posts on Swisher Sweets' official Instagram account from Jan 23, 2013 to Feb 28, 2020. We assessed product depictions (e.g. warnings, smoking cues), presence of FDA-prohibited or potentially misleading claims (e.g. lower risk, organic), marketing tactics (e.g. celebrities, selling propositions), flavors, and demographic representation.

RESULTS

We coded 1402 posts. Smoking cues (e.g. images of people smoking, product imagery) were in 764 posts (54.5%), and a warning appeared in 690 (49.2%) posts, but obscured in 29.4% of those instances (n = 203). No posts included FDA-prohibited claims, but some potentially misleading language was identified, including the use of words or visual depictions of smooth (n = 254, 18.1%) and quality/well-made (n = 239, 17%). Marketing tactics such as scarcity (n = 159, 11.3%), event promotion (n = 586, 41.8%), and alcohol depictions (n = 171, 12.2%) were common, and flavor names appeared in 598 posts (42.7%). People depicted were often young adults (n = 709, 50.6%), Black/African American (n = 549, 39.2%), and in groups (n = 473, 33.7%).

CONCLUSIONS

Both text and visuals are used to market Swisher Sweets on their Instagram account. Using social images of young adults, especially Black individuals, signals the intended use of the product. These images of visual-based social media may influence appeal, glamorization, and normalization of cigarillo smoking among vulnerable populations.

IMPLICATIONS

Tobacco marketing, including from popular cigarillo brands like Swisher Sweets, is widely used to influence consumer perceptions and behavior. Social media marketing includes text and visual, both of which increase product appeal and encourage use. Visual-based social media from the industry itself have been understudied, particularly for cigarillos. This study characterizes the ways in which Swisher Sweets uses text and visuals to market their products through their Instagram account, including smoking cues, potentially misleading language, use of celebrity endorsers, and promotion and sponsorship of events.

Adolescents’ Victim-Blaming Responses to Narratives About Sex Trafficking: Strategies for Curriculum Development

In the United States, sex-trafficking awareness and prevention has increasingly become part of government-mandated health education. This exploratory study surveyed 250 U.S. adolescents to learn more about the use of media narratives in curricula about sex trafficking in light of research findings about victim-blaming responses to survivor narratives, as well as adolescents’ still-developing emotion-regulation skills. Victim blaming is counterproductive to the goals of trafficking awareness and prevention curricula. Participants viewed one of four narrative messages about a sex-trafficking victim/survivor. Over half of participants reported victim-blaming responses after viewing the message. Participants reported low perceived efficacy regarding the ability to recognize the signs of trafficking, and some participants experienced intense fear responses to the messages. Victim blaming was not associated with fear or perceived efficacy, contradicting predictions from the Extended Parallel Process Model. This study concludes with recommendations for educators and others tasked with communicating with adolescents about sex trafficking.