ABSTRACTBackground The internet is an ideal forum for tobaccomarketing, as it is largely unregulated and there is noglobal governing body for controlling content.Nevertheless, tobacco companies deny advertising onthe internet.Objective To assess the extent and nature of Englishlanguage videos available on the Web 2.0 domain‘YouTube’ that contain tobacco brand images or words.Methods The authors conducted a YouTube searchusing five leading non-Chinese cigarette brandsworldwide. The themes and content of up to 40 of themost viewed videos returned for each search wereanalysed: a total of 163 videos.Results A majority of the 163 tobacco brand-relatedvideos analysed (71.2%, 95% CI 63.9 to 77.7) hadpro-tobacco content, versus a small minority (3.7%)having anti-tobacco content (95% CI 1.4 to 7.8). Most ofthese videos contained tobacco brand content (70.6%),the brand name in the title (71.2%) or smoking imagerycontent (50.9%). One pro-smoking music video had beenviewed over 2 million times. The four most prominentthemes of the videos were celebrity/movies, sports,music and ‘archive’, the first three of which representthemes of interest to a youth audience.Conclusions Pro-tobacco videos have a significantpresence on YouTube, consistent with indirect marketingactivity by tobacco companies or their proxies. Sincecontent may be removed from YouTube if it is found tobreach copyright or if it contains offensive material, thereis scope for the public and health organisations torequest the removal of pro-tobacco content containingcopyright or offensive material. Governments should alsoconsider implementing Framework Convention onTobacco Control requirements on the internet, to furtherreduce such pro-tobacco content.
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