Unraveling the Ozempic Craze: A Content and Thematic Analysis of Prescription Weight Loss Medication Advertisements on Meta
分析了Meta平台上处方减肥药广告的内容和主题，发现广告多针对女性、强调理想体型、突出益处而忽视风险，并利用紧迫感促销，引发对消费者福祉的伦理担忧。
The surge in popularity of glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist (GLP-1) medications, such as Ozempic, for weight loss has been amplified by direct-to-consumer advertising on social media platforms like Meta. With documented risks of such messages to consumer well-being in mind, this study applies a transformative advertising research (TAR) framework together with objectification theory and the health belief model to examine the content and thematic features of prescription weight loss advertisements. Findings from our content analysis (N = 201) and qualitative thematic analysis (N = 109) reveal that although the advertisements do not often target a specific gender, when they do target a gender, they predominantly target women (95.6%). The advertisements also emphasize thin-ideal body types, and prioritize benefits (92.5%) over risks, with few advertisements (12.9%) including important safety information. Thematic analysis identified three key themes: benefits without balance, highlighting the omission of risk information; feminized fixes, reflecting gendered messaging tied to beauty standards; and engineered urgency, promoting quick action through personalized calls to action. These strategies often normalize off-label use for aesthetic goals, raising ethical concerns about health equity and informed decision-making. By integrating TAR, this study emphasizes the need for advertising practices that prioritize consumer well-being, offering insights into the sociocultural and institutional impacts of digital pharmaceutical promotion.