Your rights versus my rights: Australian media representation of smoking and secondhand smoke in homes

Internationally, there has been growing interest in expanding smoke-free environments to include residential settings. Historically, smoke-free policies have been framed as a controversial social issue in the media and this framing can deter policy action in advancing smoke-free homes. Previous studies have examined the media discourse on smoke-free policies in public or semiprivate settings but none in residential settings. We explored how the Australian media has framed smoking and secondhand smoke drift issues in residential settings over a 10-year period.

We searched the Factiva database and used Google News search engine to identify relevant Australian news articles that reported on smoking or smoke-drift-related issues in housing contexts, published between 2015 and 2024. We conducted a content analysis of all included articles to determine temporal trends in article characteristics and used thematic analysis on a subset of articles to explore the news frames used.

We identified 220 relevant news articles and the majority were published between 2015 and 2017 (57%). Most articles contained supportive views about policy change to address smoke-drift in homes (61%) and discussed smoke-drift in multiunit housing contexts (72%). The articles predominantly cited spokespersons from non-governmental health organisations (44%). In a subsample of articles (n=89), we identified three dominant news frames: moral contention between individual rights, power imbalances and the realities of smoke-drift and government responsibility to protect public health.

Our findings suggest that the media portrayed smoke-drift in homes as fundamentally conflictual and primarily a 'rights-based' conflict between individuals. This framing may deter policy action to provide comprehensive protection from residential smoke-drift.