Download Understanding intoxicogenic identities

INTOXICATED IDENTITY:
Young people’s online alcohol
behaviours
Professor Harry Sumnall, CPH, LJMU
About me
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Professor of Substance Use, Centre for Public
Health, Liverpool John Moores University, UK
Funded research in prevention science, evidence
based practice, and RCTs
President, European Society for Prevention Research
(www.euspr.org)
Member, UK Advisory Council on the Misuse of
Drugs (ACMD)
About this talk
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Synthesis of an emerging body of research
conducted over the past 10 years examining
alcohol and social media/social networking sites
Focus on young people < 25 years old, few studies
in under 18s
Not a review of online marketing practices and its
effects on alcohol use
Critical analysis, but neutral perspective
Key references throughout, full list available upon
request
Acknowledgements
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ARUK for funding “Constructing alcohol identities.
How young people navigate and make sense of
online intoxicogenic marketing and culture”
Amanda Atkinson, Kim Ross, Emma Begley (LJMU)
Dr James Nicholls (ARUK) for convening ARUK
expert group in social media research methodology
Prof Chris Griffin (Bath University) for continued
inspirational work in this area
A note of caution
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Research methodology in this area is a work in progress
Limited empirical work
Mostly focussed on young people
Difficulties in assessing exposure to online advertising,
ethical issues in researching social media
We tend to focus on a small number of platforms
Social media platforms and technology changing all the
time – do you remember…?
Some basic observations about Young
People’s drinking
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Overall, period prevalence has been decreasing since
early 2000s.
Those who do drink, appear to be drinking more
Epidemiological evidence to suggest clustering of ‘risk
behaviours’ – important for intervention responses
Heavy alcohol consumption in late adolescence persists
into adulthood
Large number and wide range of alcohol related
hospital admissions in under 25s (e.g. 113 cases of
alcoholic liver disease in 2010, 3652 cases of ethanol
poisoning)
Social Media and Young People
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Social media sites such as Facebook reflect existing
social processes in terms of how people relate to each
other and share information.
Facebook now has 1.23 billion active monthly users
(Facebook 2014)
Facebook users, their interest, relationships and
interactions are the products that are being sold to
business
A new marketing platform
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Social media is of increasing importance to
producers of consumer goods, including alcohol.
E.g. Diego and Facebook
 21%
of its marketing spend is now on social media
 1000 Diageo marketers trained in Facebook ‘boot
camps’
 Five fold increase in sales attributed to Facebook
 Smirnoff number one alcohol brand on Facebook
worldwide
Diageo, Sept 2011
Age restrictions
Apply restrictions relevant to
national law – no evidence to
suggest YP establish fake
profiles to access
adult/alcohol content
 Broad range of restrictions on
promotion (including negative
portrayal of abstention and
‘moderation’)
 No control over ‘fan pages’,
and sharing content with
under 18s
https://www.facebook.com/help
/110094445754628
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Age screening per brand
interaction
 Content must correspond
with CAP and Portman
Codes
 Guidelines exclude news
and information,
sponsorship etc
https://support.twitter.com/a
rticles/20170440-alcoholcontent#
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Old tactics, new media?
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Young people are purposely targeted by some
alcohol brands (Hastings 2009).
Alcohol brands have various methods of engaging
with users via new social media. Social media
provides more extensive ways for the alcohol
industry to engage with young people (Brooks
2010).
Alcohol brands use social network sites to normalise
alcohol consumption (Nicholls 2013).
Old tactics, new media?
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Examples of online activities:
Video adverts
 Page wall
 Alcohol sale links
 Additional content – comedy videos, sports and music info,
‘fun’ apps, prize draws
 Links to YouTube – no apparent age restrictions on many
videos
 Daily comments – some facts and suggestions about brands,
but mostly about lifestyle issues
 Links to Drinkaware and Age control messages
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Winpenny et al., 2013
Ways in which social media differs
from traditional marketing
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Allows for a direct and purposeful interaction with
brands
Involvement ‘in the conversation’, not directly with
the brand
Greater targeting, based upon demographics and
browsing history – future developments?
Interaction amongst friendship groups
Social – the distinction between user-generated
producers and brand promotion of material is
blurred
Social Brands summit, London 6/2/14
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Andy Porteous, former Unilever senior vice-president,
digital: ‘Most marketers are nowhere near being
confident of return of investment on social media’
Participants discussed:
Social media given less credibility in the Boardroom than
often expected by ‘outsiders’
 Indicators of engagement are not the same as commercial
outcomes
 Use of Facebook to guide people to brand conversations,
not the product itself (cf Nicholls, 2013)
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Social media and young people’s
drinking culture
Qualitative work:
 It has become socially acceptable and to some extent
expected for users, including young people, to display
alcohol-related content such as images depicting
drinking, comments, discussions and statuses, and visible
interaction with third party devices such as online
drinking games and alcohol advertising
 Drinking is seen as fun, pleasurable and social within
relatively safe ‘intoxogenic digital spaces’
(See: Griffin et al., 2013; McCreanor et al., 2012;
Morgan et al., 2010, Tonk, 2012)
Social media and young people’s
drinking culture
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Online representations of alcohol are a continuation of
the night out, essential in the construction of drinking
stories, and integral to the intoxication ritual
Selective editing of social media representations (where
possible) to avoid a ‘negative’ representation of
intoxication (cybershame?) and to reinforce the group
identity
Alcohol use important in the accumulation of ‘social
capital’ – not necessarily negative
A range of potentially risky behaviours associated with
positive representations and an increase in the
acceptability of these behaviours amongst peers
Association with ‘real world’ drinking?
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Limited investigation so far
Significant association between the number/type of
Facebook alcohol representations with AUDIT score,
and self-reported alcohol related injury (Moreno et
al., 2012)
Significant association between visual and textual
representations of alcohol identity and selfreported alcohol use (Ridout et al., 2011)
Social media and identity
• Online identity important for all
users – although may not be
explicitly aware of this
• It may differ between platforms
Capital, identity, alcohol, and social
media
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Social media spaces are an extension of the field/space in
which YP act out identities, gain, and depict capital
Social capital - Who you know, and the social networks you
participate in have social value; they provide resources
based on group membership, relationships, and networks of
influence – drinking in social groups and the status this
conveys
Cultural capital – key to ‘distinction’, meaning is attached to
particular cultural artefacts and behaviours - including
alcohol
Symbolic capital – how all forms of capital are symbolised
– objects hold symbolic capital – e.g. alcohol brands
after Bourdieu, 1984
Symbolic struggles in the alcohol game
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Individuals may deliberately construct sociability for
the purpose of creating social capital
Pursuit of capital can help determine how a young
person’s interests relate to the interests of the
friendship group (e.g. alcohol use), and the
particular strategies that are used within the group
in the accumulation of social position, status and
identity
Symbolic struggles in the alcohol game
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Young people often struggle to accumulate and express the
‘right’ and desired image/identity in relation to alcohol in
order to be included, and to distinguish themselves from less
desirable others (e.g. non-drinkers, drinkers of certain
brands, certain drinking practices, certain consequences of
drinking)
Can a well crafted brand help them to achieve this?
Similarly, photographs, brand affiliation and comments
displaying the ‘wrong’ type of cultural (drinking) capital
may have implications for an individual’s status within the
social hierarchy of their peer group
= impression management in the pursuit of capital
Implications
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Alcohol can be seen as a socio-cultural product with
meaning and importance beyond its functional value
The social practice of purchase, consumption, and
representation of alcohol products forms part of an
individual’s self-presentation, whereby desired identities
are performed in (semi) controllable social settings
May also be used as a means of judging others and
distinguishing the self, whilst also signalling conformity
with acceptable friendship and peer norms
Why might this be appealing to
marketers?
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Alcohol provides both a practical and symbolic
function; alcohol brands can be seen as cultural
resources that consumers actively use and reappropriate in the representation of self and the
construction of identity
Provides an opportunity to focus on lifestyles and
identities which are typically depicted in the
marketing of alcoholic products rather than the
practical function of alcohol, which may be directly
restricted by law or social media platforms
Response of young people to online alcohol
marketing
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Creation of an online intoxicogenic space –
normalisation?
Provides a means of constructing, negotiating and
signalling aspirational identities in relation to
alcohol to peers
YP in NZ regarded online alcohol advertising as
‘useful’ and informative, but little recognition of
marketing intent despite thinking of themselves as
‘savvy’ consumers
Hebden, 2011
What is the social media health
response? Atkinson et al,. in prep
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Few in number (all ages) and under developed with
respect to content and theoretical basis
Do not appear to consider why YP represent
themselves online in the ways that they do
No big campaigns targeted at under 18s
Mostly targeted towards parents and teachers,
encouraging them to monitor and educate young
people about alcohol
Further research questions…
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Does exposure to peer and fan generated alcohol
content mediate differences in individual alcohol use?
Does construction of, and affiliation to, an alcohol
related identity lead to greater alcohol use or
problematic alcohol use?
Does exposure to online advertising lead to an increase
in alcohol use? How to we measure exposure?
Is normalisation of alcohol use reinforced through
exposure to branding in social media ? How do we
measure this?
Concluding remarks
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Participation in drinking culture, social media, and
global alcohol marketing provide new ways for young
people to define, distinguish and belong through the
creation of carefully constructed identities
The rapid development of social networking
technologies and the display of alcohol content, raises
new issues regarding potential influence upon young
people’s drinking behaviour.
Traditional marketing restrictions and policies less
relevant or applicable
Health is, yet again, slow to respond
Contact
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Professor Harry Sumnall
Centre for Public Health
Liverpool John Moores University
UK
[email protected]
@profhrs
@euspr
www.cph.org.uk