DECODING THE IMAGE-CONSUMPTION, YOUNG-PEOPLE, MAGAZINES AND SMOKING -AN EXPLORATION OF THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES

The concern that young people may be influenced by magazine images of smoking can be traced to cultural developments which have characterize d the latter part of the 20th century, where the production and consum ption of image is merely one facet in a transformation which has alter ed the way life is lived, perceived and experienced, These development s have been termed 'late' or 'post' modernism, This paper develops a t heoretical explanation of the use of cigarettes in magazine fashion sp reads in the context of these wider cultural changes, The rise of cons umption as a means to establish self-identity will be discussed, as wi ll its dependence on the marketing of image, The paper relates this to the growth of youth and style magazines, and their increasing use of smoking to emphasize particular moods and images, these being created to exploit certain mythologies which young people identify with and as pire to, Three ways in which images of smoking could influence young p eople's smoking behaviour are identified, The second part of the paper discusses some key theoretical questions and methodological issues th at need to be considered when researching the semiotics of smoking, an d describes the ways in which the authors attempted to address these c oncerns in a study which explored young people's perceptions of smokin g in youth and style magazines, The third part of the paper discusses the authors' experience of casing the methods which they developed and the implications for future research in this field, The focus of the paper is thus on theoretical and methodological issues rather than the empirical findings of the study, which are reported elsewhere.