Implications for Minimum Unit Pricing Advocacy: What Can We Learn from UK Newsprint Coverage of Key Claim-Makers in the Policy Debate?

On May 24th 2012, Scotland passed the Alcohol (Minimum Pricing) Bill. Minimum unit pricing is a legislative intervention intended to raise the price of the cheapest alcohol to reduce alcohol consumption and related harms. Communications and political sciences literatures offer a theoretical framework to investigate how competing frames about policy issues are presented in the news media from key claim-makers. Content analysis was conducted on seven UK and three Scottish national newspapers between 1st May 2011 and 31st May 2012. Relevant articles were identified using the electronic databases Nexis UK and Newsbank. A total of 262 articles were eligible for detailed coding and analysis. This paper attempts to map out the dynamic interplay between media framings from key claim-makers of what constitutes the alcohol problem and the arguments for and against minimum unit pricing in the months leading up to the passing of the legislation, with a view to informing policy advocacy