TY - JOUR T1 - Tobacco industry exploiting International Women’s Day on social media JF - Tobacco Control JO - Tob Control SP - e157 LP - e158 DO - 10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2019-055183 VL - 29 IS - e1 AU - Daniel Hunt AU - Marita Hefler AU - Becky Freeman Y1 - 2020/12/01 UR - http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/29/e1/e157.abstract N2 - The Twitter accounts of two of the world’s largest tobacco companies, @InsidePMI (Philip Morris International) and @BATPress (British American Tobacco) posted multiple tweets in March 2019 celebrating International Women’s Day (IWD) and the International Week of Women, using the hashtags #IWD2019 and #BalanceForBetter (see figures 1–3). #BalanceForBetter was the official campaign theme of IWD 2019, which aims to ‘build a gender-balanced world’.1 This hashtag was used to amplify IWD content on social media.Figure 1 Philip Morris International tweet dated 04 March 2019 using the hashtags #BalanceForBetter and #IWD2019. IWD, International Women’s Day.Figure 2 Philip Morris International tweet dated 06 March 2019 using the hashtags #BalanceForBetter and #IWD2019. IWD, International Women’s Day.Figure 3 British American Tobacco tweet dated 08 March 2019 using the hashtags #BalanceForBetter and #IWD2019. BAT, British American Tobacco; IWD, International Women’s Day.These tweets draw on the themes of women’s equality, gender empowerment and equal pay. Accordingly, this attempt to embrace women’s equality is the latest example of how tobacco industry marketing has sought to use emerging cultural contexts and reference points to build positive associations with smoking as a feminist act.2 The media channels may have changed, but the strategy is the same: … ER -