Alcohol and social media: Drinking and drunkenness while online

Helen Moewaka Barnes1, Tim McCreanor1, Ian Goodwin2, Antonia Lyons3, Christine Griffin4, Fiona Hutton5

1. Whariki Research Group, SHORE and Whariki Research Centre, School of Public Health, PO Box 6137, Wellesley Street, Auckland, New Zealand

2. School of English and Media Studies, Massey University, Private Box 756, Wellington 6140, New Zealand, email: i.goodwin@massey.ac.nz

3. School of Psychology, Massey University, Private Box 756, Wellington 6140, New Zealand, email: a.lyons@massey.ac.nz

4. Department of Psychology, University of Bath, Claverton Down, Bath BA2 7AY, UK, email: c.griffin@bath.ac.uk

5. Institute of Criminology, School of Social & Cultural Studies, Victoria University of Wellington, PO Box 600, Wellington, New Zealand, email: Fiona.Hutton@vuw.ac.nz

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Abstract

Our New Zealand-based research provides new insights, drawn from focus group and

interview data gathered from 18-25 year olds, about how alcohol use and technology

converge in drinking and drunkeness while online. Alcohol consumption is a key source of

harm and damage to population health, particularly for young people whose engagement with

web-based communications may be exacerbating problems. Participants’ talk around alcohol

and SNS use is complex, with expressions of caution and regret, juxtaposed with accounts of

fun, excitement and pleasure. Sharing, narration and elaboration of experiences of alcohol use

online, reinforce the social nature of risky drinking practices. The interface of social media

and alcohol use is attracting novel forms of alcohol marketing that penetrates virtual and

offline spaces, undermining conventional public health policies, approaches and tools for

reducing population level alcohol consumption.

Keywords: Social networking systems, social media, alcohol, young people, intoxication

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Introduction

In this paper we investigate youth drinking practices that occur in association with online

social networking systems (SNS), analysing focus group and digital navigation tracking data

from Aotearoa New Zealand (Lyons et al., 2014). We studied how these practices are

embedded into intoxigenic environments (Griffiths & Casswell, 2010; McCreanor, Moewaka

Barnes, Kaiwai, Borell, & Gregory, 2008) – social contexts that encourage heavy drinking

(Lyons et al., 2014). Our research takes a broad public health perspective, incorporating

approaches from media studies, social psychology and indigenous studies to reflect on the

salience of virtual social spaces in young people’s alcohol cultures (Goodwin, Lyons, Griffin,

& McCreanor, 2014; Mart, Mergendoller, & Simon, 2009; Nicholls, 2012).

While acknowledging SNS use produces benefits for young people, our focus parallels

broader critical concerns that focus on how the commercialised nature of these platforms

influences social life (boyd, 2007, 2014; Burkell, Fortier, Wong, & Simpson, 2014; Hearn,

2008; Livingstone, 2008; Senft, 2008; Subrahmanyam & Greenfield, 2008). Our data suggest

that young people’s engagements with SNS encourage cultures of intoxication (Measham &

Brain, 2005), normalising heavy drinking and increasing exposure to commercial interests

(McCreanor et al., 2013). As van Dijk (2013, p.65) argued: ‘What used to be informal social

activities in the private sphere – friends hanging out together and exchanging ideas on what

they like – have become algorithmically mediated interactions in the corporate sphere.’

We add to existing literatures which have focussed primarily on online displays of offline

drinking events and correlations between SNS use and consumption, exploring young

people’s drinking practices that occur while they are online. We analyse social practices

enabled by the unique characteristics of social media - continuous networked broadcast to

one’s peers, rapid image sharing, blurring of public/private domains, and the commercial

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foundation of platforms – that inform us about the nature of relationships between SNS use

and alcohol consumption.

Our data include multiple accounts of intoxication and consumption while using SNS, a

context characterised by the creation and dissemination of real-time, persistent, narrated and

image-based records of user behaviours. We also examine synchronous drinking in virtually

connected, spatially separated locations, the performative broadcast of user-generated

encouragements to drink and young people’s practices of alcohol-related ‘micro-celebrity’ –

self-presentation strategies online that involve ‘amping up’ one’s social life (Senft, 2008).

Both known and unknown audiences, including commercial interests, can readily access such

elements of ‘live’ online drinking cultures. We argue that alcohol interests seamlessly exploit

the content and ‘big data’ that these peer-orientated practices generate, through contracts with

SNS corporations (Fuchs, 2010), adding challenging dimensions to research, debate and

policy development around young people and alcohol.

Young people’s drinking and the culture of intoxication

Although young people, particularly those under 25 years, do not necessarily view alcohol

use as problematic and often argue that it plays a positive role in their socialising (Brown &

Gregg, 2012; Hutton, 2012; McCreanor et al., 2008; Szmigin et al., 2008), the existence of a

widespread culture of intoxication produces considerable concerns for public health. Babor et

al. (2010) argue there is strong evidence that young people consume alcohol to intoxication

more frequently than other age groups. Such drinking contributes to acute harms – violence,

injury, unwanted sex, alcohol poisoning and absenteeism – and longer term problems

including addiction, dementia, organ system damage, diabetes and cancers. Rehm et al.

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(2009) show that alcohol is responsible for 4.6% of the global burden of disease, with more

than a third of the life-course impacts of alcohol experienced by those aged 15-29 years.

In New Zealand, where local youth cultures of intoxication have been reinforced by

liberalising alcohol policy, research is consistent with international findings. Since 2000,

alcohol policy liberalisation (Huckle, You, & Casswell, 2011) enhanced young people’s

access to alcohol and there have been increases in disorder arrests, excess breath alcohol and

drink-driving crashes (Huckle, Pledger, & Casswell, 2006). Other research shows that high

proportions of young people, including tertiary students (Kypri et al., 2009; McEwan, Swain,

& Campbell, 2011), are involved in regular, normalised, gendered (Lyons & Willott, 2008;

Willott & Lyons, 2012) heavy drinking practices. Young people viewed such consumption as

sociable, pleasurable and fun (Hutton, 2012; Lyons & Willott, 2008), despite evidence of

harms, including blackouts, drink-driving, unprotected sex and violence (Kypri et al., 2009).

Virtual intoxigenic environments

Quantitative research mainly in the US has focused on representations of alcohol and

drinking practices in participants’ SNS profiles. The role of SNS in influencing pro-drinking

attitudes within peer groups was identified by Egan and Moreno (2011) in a survey of male

college students. In this study over 85% of students’ Facebook profiles made positive

references to alcohol use. They suggest that this compounds the problem noted by Perkins,

Haines and Rice (2005) that students typically over-estimate the drinking of their peers,

elevating expectations about norms of consumption.

Associations between displays of alcohol intoxication and problem drinking in university

student profiles and alcohol-related problems as assessed via AUDIT were found by Moreno,

Christakis, Egan, Brockman and Becker (2012). Moreno et al. (2014) found that alcohol

displays on Facebook increased sharply in the transition between school and university and

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were closely linked to alcohol-based events on campus. Westgate, Neighbors, Heppner, Jahn

and Lindgren (2014), also working with US undergraduates, found alcohol-related posts

(statuses, comments, photos) on Facebook were a strong predictor of consumption, problems,

AUDIT scores and alcohol cravings. Using an experimental design to manipulate perceived

alcohol norms via constructed Facebook profiles, Litt and Stock (2011) found significant

differences in terms of intention to use alcohol among US 13-15 year olds exposed to pro-

alcohol profiles compared to those viewing more conservative forms. Another US study of

over 2000 young people aged 18-24 found an association between online network densities of

individuals and their alcohol consumption (Cook, Bauermeister, Gordon-Messer, &

Zimmerman, 2012). Using regression analyses of interconnections of individuals in a

network, higher levels of close ties were associated with elevated alcohol use. Wolfe (2012)

found a positive correlation between scores on drinking and internet addiction measures in

American female college students. She also noted that reports of online drinking were

commonplace, tending to occur in conjunction with SNS use and other entertainment-based

online activities.

Qualitative research approaches provide some insight into young people’s shared

understandings that underlie these associations. Focus group methods indicate that young

people in the US see alcohol references in Facebook as representing actual drinking

behaviours or efforts to enhance social standing (Moreno, Briner, Williams, Walker, &

Christakis, 2009). Griffiths and Casswell (2010) studied young people’s engagements with

Bebo, showing it played a role in their drinking cultures through sharing information about

alcohol, telling drinking stories and developing online identities. Niland, Lyons, Goodwin, &

Hutton (2014) found drinking photos and stories on New Zealand participants’ Facebook

pages were embedded into their drinking cultures, evoking camaraderie, acceptance and

belonging within social networks. Sharing photographs of peer-group alcohol consumption

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has become a means of narrating drinking activities, engaging in post-drinking social life and

establishing group drinking behaviours (Tonks, Lyons, & Goodwin, 2015). As Brown and

Gregg (2012) demonstrated in their Australian research, Facebook use involved pleasures of

anticipation, engagement and post-drinking narration around risky alcohol use.

SNS use among many young people seems to be associated with alcohol consumption

through strengthening pro-drinking attitudes, affecting perceived peer norms and normalising

drinking cultures. Qualitative research in particular, highlights contextual dimensions of the

increasing entanglement of SNS and youth drinking cultures. There is also a growing concern

about alcohol marketing on SNS (Atkinson, Elliot, Ellis, & Sumnall, 2011; Carah, 2014;

Jernigan & Rushman, 2014; Moraes, Michaelidou, & Meneses, 2014; Nicholls, 2012;

Winpenny, Marteau, & Nolte, 2013) which is currently under-studied (McCreanor et al.,

2013).

Our research explored how SNS are being used by young people in their drinking cultures in

New Zealand, and how these technologies may shape behaviours and identities, across

ethnicity, social class and gender. We collected qualitative audio-visual data from focus

groups and individual digital tracking data in multiple geographical locations, between 2010

and the end of 2012 (Lyons et al., 2014). Here we shift beyond existing studies of

representations of drinking in SNS profiles, to examine overlapping, SNS-enabled practices

around drunkenness and drinking while online, focussing on participant meanings and the

implications for public health.

Method

Following institutional ethical approval, we recruited 141 participants across 34 focus groups

through word-of-mouth and snowballing techniques from multiple start-points, including

work-places, universities and community groups. A target person invited their friends to

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participate in group discussions. Each participant was given a $30 gift voucher in recognition

of their time commitment.

In total the research included 80 female participants (57%), 57 male participants (40%), and 4

Fa’afafine participants (3%). Fa’afafine is a term used, with some variations, in Pasifika

cultures for people born male but whose spirit is female. Participants self-identified as

belonging to one of three ethnic groups: Maori, the indigenous population; Pasifika, peoples

of Pacific Islands ancestry and; Pakeha, in this case people largely of European descent. All

were aged 18-25 years (m=20) and groups ranged mainly between 3 and 7 participants, with

2 groups of 2 participants. Twelve groups consisted of predominantly Pakeha participants (4

all female, 4 all male, 4 mixed), twelve of predominantly Maori participants (2 all female, 1

all male, 9 mixed), and ten of predominantly Pasifika participants (3 all female, 2 all male,

and 5 mixed).

Groups were run by three female researchers whose ethnicity matched the cultural

compositions of the groups. Our sampling emphasised diversity within each cultural strand

and groups were drawn from urban and provincial/rural settings and different social strata to

provide rich, detailed, ‘thick’ experiential data (Patton, 2002, p.437). Open-ended discussions

lasting 1-2 hours, around socialising, alcohol consumption and drinking practices, took place

in people’s homes, workplaces and community rooms. All focus group interviews were video

and audio taped recorded and transcribed verbatim using pseudonyms to protect participant

identity.

We also recruited 23 individuals (8 Maori, 8 Pasifika and 7 Pakeha) - 20 from focus groups

and 3 additional participants (who had been keen to participate but unable to attend a focus

group) for one-hour, individual interviews in which we recorded their accounts and digital

navigation of SNS and other online spaces they used. Data consist of audio recordings of

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responses to interviewer questions, participant commentary on their sites of interest, digital

records of all sites visited and video of participants’ facial and non-verbal communications,

all of which are available as synchronous streams in the data record of the event. Transcripts

using pseudonyms and augmented by description of the online activities were made for each

individual interview.

Thematic analyses (Braun & Clarke, 2012) of focus group data and a multi-modal approach

(Kress, 2010) to individual data were used to delineate the nature, valence and implications of

alcohol and social media use. Transcripts were coded in two stages by TM, and then

discussed and revised following input from all team members. Initial coding selected all

references to alcohol, drinks, drinking, partying, clubbing, nights out and similar terminology

Subsequent analysis concentrated on developing thematic descriptions highlighted with key

data excerpts (Braun & Clarke, 2012).

Analyses

We offer analyses focussed on five excerpts about drinking practices and social media from

focus groups and one individual interview excerpt. These data have been chosen because they

both articulate with the broad dataset and allow us to illustrate two key thematic elements our

general analysis revealed – Drunk while online and Drinking while online. These themes

demarcate two distinct behavioural patterns and provide a foundation for discussion of the

implications of such practices for public health. In the first pattern, participants have been

drinking offline and come to SNS intoxicated; in the second, young people are electively

online as they consume alcohol. We acknowledge that these practices overlap in various ways

and include data (third and fourth excerpts below) that span both for this reason. These

practices varied by gender, ethnicity and class in subtle and sometimes clear-cut ways, but

these differences are not detailed here due to space limitations.

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Drunk while online

The full dataset records numerous diverse accounts of experiences of intoxication while using

SNS, suggesting that it is not an uncommon practice among our participants. While many

spoke of the pleasures involved, a number of participants expressed the need for caution and

restraint. Such accounts highlight the characteristic dis-inhibition arising from intoxication

and, perhaps reflecting on past regrets, sometimes formulated ‘guides to practice’ such as

banning themselves from going online when drunk to minimise indiscretions.

Excerpt 1

Aroha My mate put it real funny, she was like "going on Facebook drunk is like

being fraped, but you do it to yourself" [laughter]. You write stupid stuff then

you're like "awwwww delete it".

Maori FG 3

Aroha reflects that drunken Facebook use amounts to self-inflicted risk and potential harm

and her protective ‘advice to self’ entails the use of the delete button. ‘Frape’ is a neologism

in circulation for the commonplace, usually mischievous, sometimes malevolent, activity of

altering another person’s Facebook page without permission. Aroha’s comment thus adds an

element of caution, suggesting harms that can be done to self through drunken postings

broadcast to a wide audience, adding a further dimension to drunken regret. This was

gendered with young women more attentively ensuring their online identities were

appropriate (Lyons et al., 2014), underlining values around self-presentation and performance

in SNS which are amplified in the next excerpt.

Ben elaborated on what can happen when intoxicated comments posted online become a

permanent record.

Excerpt 2

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Ben You just start talking shit. [laughing] And like ‘cause you you won't hesitate

to write stuff. If something annoys you [laughs] you'll just [mimes hands

typing] comment on it… and let them have it. But the thing is it's not like a

conversation where like someone can forget it. It's in print and it's there.

[laughs] It's always there.

Pakeha FG 5

The use of phrases such as “talking shit” and “let them have it” signal behaviours beyond the

commonplace. Drunken performance impairs capacity for reflexive control and steps outside

unspoken norms of online practice producing impulsive reactions that reveal what might

ordinarily be controlled thoughts or feelings. The immediacy and accessibility of the medium

means there are serious implications here for self-presentation, relationships and the

challenges of managing meanings that are now broadcast online. These features exacerbate

the vital difference between ephemeral conversation and the more public and persistent

nature of online interaction, with the implied risk that drunken communications may be

scrutinised in the sober light of day and become permanently available. Ben’s repeated

laughter is ironic, acknowledging both the pleasures of the moment (“you won’t hesitate”)

and the risks, in terms of unfettered criticism of others remaining after the fact. This shows

the complexity of the shifting temporalities users must now negotiate and highlights the

problematic nature of such alcohol-related indiscretions, while preserving notions of

authenticity (in vino veritas perhaps) particularly pertinent to online self-display. As is often

the case in conversations around alcohol, the laughter also builds a bridge between the

unacceptable and the acceptable, smoothing out the embarrassment or shame of particular

anti-social or inappropriate intoxicated behaviours.

Other participants spoke of more hedonistic practices around alcohol and the online space,

where cautions and restraints of the kind canvassed so far, were traded against perceived

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benefits and pleasures of alcohol use while online. Two excerpts illustrating this complexity

come from a focus group and the individual interview with a member of that group. The two

data forms complement each other and provide a stronger understanding of an event that

occurred in this peer group. We placed them to straddle our thematic division between

intoxication and consumption since, in the first excerpt the online element is explicitly linked

to being drunk and the second deals more particularly with drinking and the engagements via

SNS.

Excerpt 3

Alex Like “what shall we do?”, “Do a webcam!”, “Alright good idea.” We took like

videos and like fifty photos and I was drunk I was loading them all up to

Facebook like all sixty of them and we were moving like [moves hands in sharp

movements] this much in each photo and if you like click through real quickly.

Chris They were like shutter-speed ones.

Alex Honestly if you go like this it was like we were moving back and forwards.

[laughs].

Chris There's one of them where you can see me like [hand moves in jerks to mouth]

drinking my beer.

Alex The beer was [hand like holding glass and jerking movements] slowly going

down. [laughs and Chris laughs].

Pakeha FG 5

A “webcam” in this context is a drinking occasion conducted with the onboard camera of a

computer running to record rapid, sequential images as events unfold. Alex and Chris

reconstruct a ‘pre-loading’ event, the point of which is to get intoxicated rapidly, ‘banking’

cheap alcohol (Hadfield, 2011, p.64) against the expense of the night-time economy.

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Participants relay a sense that this practice is familiar, enjoyable, and valuably enhanced the

drinking by adding dimensions of photography and posting.

The appreciation of features of the webcam sequence, such as robot-like movement produced

through time-lapse recording of consumption, is signalled in the co-construction and shared

laughter, showing participants have watched and analysed the material, presumably to

scrutinise and re-visit their performance. The combination of drinking, intoxication,

recording, uploading and self-presentation, as well as the retelling here and presumably

elsewhere, is a powerful example of the seamless integration of intoxication and identity in

cyberspace. These dimensions of drinking produce new pleasures dependent on computer

mediation, self-monitoring and the presence of an online audience, insights that are

reinforced in the excerpt from Alex’s individual interview.

Drinking while online

The individual interview with Alex amplified issues arising from the focus group data. At the

interviewer’s request, Alex took her to his Facebook page, showed her the webcam timelapse

series referred to in Excerpt 3 and interactions that relate to it.

Excerpt 4

T Do you have albums?

Alex Not really

[clicks on Alex/Wall]

See I’m not really, I don't have that many photos, so I don’t have albums as such. I've got

little things like ‘Town b4 exams’

[clicks on thumbnail and small sequenced photos begin to load up]

So this is just us, this is the one we were talking about with the beer drinking thing

T Yeah we've got to get onto that

Alex With the webcam thing

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[scrolls through the photo sequence]

T Yeah.

Alex So this is

T Who took those photos?

Alex Webcam

T Oh that's you were talking about that in the focus group

Alex Yeah

T I didn't quite understand what you meant by webcam, like so did you just have

the webcam

Alex Yeah so webcam sits there [points at computer] and everyone sits around it and

it just takes like a thousand photos so we all kind of start moving around, and as

you can see Chris' beer slowly

[T laughs]

starts to go down

[clicks on Chris’ photo]

should load faster [waits for photos to load] come on, they’re loading faster, it's just quicker like this

[scrolls down to a message that has been posted on his page by Anna (a woman in his ‘friends’ list) at the time of the webcam event]

T Oh yeah he was saying

Alex down here [reads out message] “haha they are the funniest photos it’s actually

like a sequence in one lot u fully see Chris drinking his beer from start to finish

ahhaa i LOLed” Pakeha Individual Interview 4

The webcam drinking event is depicted in a sequence of photographs that show four young

men and one young woman drinking beer from bottles in an animated manner that suggests

excitement, dis-inhibition and intoxication. The thumbnail from which the photographs are

accessed is curiously labelled “Town b4 exams” suggesting a kind of rebelliousness, given

that drinking is ordinarily reserved for celebration after such travails. We cannot determine

how much is consumed but interpretation of the images strongly suggests drunkeness and, in

the focus group, Alex stated that he was “drunk” while posting the album online.

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Interestingly throughout the sequence the young people remain approximately in their

starting positions, actively clustered around the camera, talking, interacting, laughing, making

gestures and other movements as they drink, enacting a performativity that elevates their

practice beyond banal pre-loading to a display tailored for a known audience on SNS. This

interpretation is borne out by the account in the focus group data above where Alex explained

that he uploaded the sequence to his Facebook page during the session, making it available to

his networks in real time. In his final turn in the transcript Alex navigated to the newsfeed on

his page, reading out an appreciative comment on the album and showing one ‘like’,

confirming that there was an audience viewing the performance.

Asked later in the interview if webcam drinking is common Alex replies “yes and no” but it

is evident that the webcam sequences and related images are a highly valued form of self- and

social group construction that our participants chose to share online. Alex explains that his

group uses the webcam quite often and shows multiple thumbnails of similar instances,

suggesting it is a valued performance, evocative of micro-celebrity in increasing visibility

and popularity (Senft, 2008).

An important question arises around the salience of audiences to such performances and the

extent to which, either in real time or after the event, such phenomena mesh with and

encourage consumption. Further data that revolve specifically around purposively drinking

while online help to shed some light on this issue.

A key feature of drinking while online is that, despite the physical separation of drinkers and

audience, these behaviours are fundamentally social and entail intentional engagement with

known audiences. The data also illustrate the complexity of these online behaviours because,

in contrast to the caution and ambivalence expressed in excerpts 1 and 2, they entail

encouragement of drinking.

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Excerpt 5

T So you mean people talking about [drinking online]?

Jane Oh yeah. [looks at Hays]

Hays Oh ‘these Cody's are yum right now’.

Jane Yeah.

T Yeah?

Jane Mhm.

Hays Oh ‘these Volts are going down real good’. Pakeha FG3

In this interchange participants characterise their broadcast drinking practices with a co-

construction in which Hays provides the content and Jane affirms accuracy. Hays’ comments

are proffered as examples of what she might post as messages during a drinking session,

offering branded encouragements to her virtual audience. The communicative intensity and

immediacy of the personalised endorsement of products would be persuasive to peers

audiences.

A final excerpt amplifies the social dimensions of such practices.

Excerpt 6

Amohia Whenever we're having drinks at my girlfriend’s house, we'll just all sit there

on Facebook just casually drinking too.

DO And so what sort of things do you do?

Amohia On Facebook?

DO When you're having a drink

Amohia Uploading statuses, telling everyone that you're drinking.

Khloe ‘So drunk right now, anybody wanna join?’

Amohia I actually do that

DO What sort of statuses would you say

Amohia Oh ‘plan to go out tonight’, I don't know just like sending it out, or ‘who’s

going out tonight?’

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Khloe Yeah ‘who’s going out tonight?’, ‘who’s keen to go out tonight?’, ‘who wants

to sober drive?’

Maori FG 4

This exchange is explicit about drinking while online, with SNS routinely used (“whenever

we are having drinks”) for encouraging, planning and enacting events. The spontaneous

linkage of the performance of intoxication (“so drunk right now”) with one-to-many

broadcast (“telling everyone that you’re drinking”) and the invitation to others to participate,

speaks powerfully of the primacy of the social in these SNS-dependant practices.

The action of posting about drinking, while drinking, is more than a neutral report. It is a

form of self-display that celebrates intoxication in a manner knowingly tailored for broader

audience consumption, which is valued because it stimulates peer engagement and

participation. In these data, we are not privvy to ‘friend’ responses although as we saw in

Excerpt 4, peer reactions are likely to be positive. The inducements to join the drinking, if

successful, create a scenario of spatially-separated parties whose consumption is mutually

reinforcing. This SNS-mediated drinking appears to facilitate the planning of further

drinking, to segue smoothly into subsequent offline events and is therefore implicated in

possibly extending both the period of consumption and the network of participants.

Summary

These analyses complement understandings from our wider dataset, providing insights

around the confluence of drinking practices and SNS. Familiar understandings about the

disinhibition entailed in alcohol use were enacted within the context of the relatively novel

pleasures and problems that arise from using SNS while drunk or drinking. The performance

of both consumption and intoxication in such contexts was a social behaviour with pleasures

and identity-related value arising from the sharing of these behaviours. Other attractions

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include the anticipation, planning, initiation, recording, and uploading of images and posting

comments about drinking occasions. Also salient are the fun of conversation, speculation and

disinhibited critique about people within and beyond peer networks and the building of group

cohesion through shared online practices. Such incentives mean that, while drinking and

drunkenness in online environments can be ends in themselves, positive associations with

relevant social domains are likely to contribute to the perceived value and normalcy of these

behaviours. Research shows that practices that reinforce a view of drinking and intoxication

as frequent and commonplace are linked to elevated consumption (Kypri et al., 2009; Moreno

et al., 2009).

On the other hand problems reported in the data presented here and within the wider dataset,

include inappropriate, incompetent and incoherent communications that may bring trouble or

embarrassment to the author or irritation to others. A range of undesirable social

consequences centred on feeling foolish about drunken posts, peer conflicts, unwanted

‘friend’ requests, account tampering from lax security, altered statuses, bogus messages as

well as the fear of physically damaging equipment, parental disapproval and potential career

implications.

There was a clear sense that, despite the difficulties, the emergence of drinking cultures in the

SNS environment were seen positively by participants and enhanced their sense of identity,

popularity, inclusion and self-determination. This complex set of positive reinforcements

helps explain their willingness to adopt the affordances of the technology for new practices of

visibility and accessibility in relation to alcohol use.

Discussion

The findings reported here elucidate little-researched practices around alcohol use, showing

that people go online when they are drunk, and are also deliberately or incidentally drinking

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while online. Clearly these are social behaviours and performances (often visually-mediated)

that orient to known audiences, affirming understandings of the importance of peer-group

processes to the maintenance of intoxigenic environments (Griffiths & Casswell, 2010;

McCreanor et al., 2008) and the online networks of young people (Egan & Moreno, 2011;

Moreno et al., 2009). Social media contribute to the expansion, amplification and durability

of drinking events, linking different drinking groups and locations in real time and creating

new virtual intoxigenic spaces within drinking cultures.

Our analysis reinforces the findings of Brown and Gregg (2012), showing how the pleasures

and rewards of using alcohol and SNS together are at work within diverse social practices

discussed by participants. For example with the webcam data (Excerpt 4) we see the

relevance of Senft’s (2008) ideas about branding self and micro-culture. Participants make

use of the affordances of onboard camera technology and Facebook, creating a specifically

performative record of their pre-loading and posting it with a known audience in mind, as a

mark of ‘amplified’ sociality, popularity, and distinction within their networks. Since our data

were gathered the efflorescence of the ‘Neknominate’ drinking game via You Tube

(Wikipedia, 2014) in early 2014 suggested that phenomena like the webcam and other

examples from our Drinking while online theme are far from isolated aberrations. Such

practices represent accumulations of social capital within the attention economy of SNS,

where invisibility is perceived as failure and amounts to disconnection from social life (van

Dijk, 2013). They also constitute imitative links to wider societal engagement with

commercialised celebrity cultures as part of a neoliberal project of self that contributes to

consumerist society (Hearn, 2008). These practices provide economic drivers of and avenues

for exploitation of SNS user behaviours by unknown audiences including alcohol marketers

and sellers.

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The related issue of user-generated promotion of alcohol brands in SNS (Mart et al., 2009) in

our data extends into product endorsements (Excerpt 5) and active encouragements to drink

(Excerpt 6) broadcast to personal networks. Related phenomena have a vigorous life outside

of our data set as evidenced for example by a range of branded alcohol videos on You Tube

posted by members of the public. A Google search for Cody’s Bourbon (named in Excerpt 5)

provided a link, http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=UUaldVOwFtf6DC2Z6vXp9Ktw,

where New Zealanders have uploaded 49 homemade clips of quirky, humorous and often

risky activities in which the brand is visibly consumed or credited. Endorsements such as

those in Excerpt 5 bring elements of familiarity, trust and inclusion into recommendations for

specific brands that constitute an electronic form of the holy grail of marketers, namely word-

of-mouth promotion.

The real-time, one-to-many linkage of separate locations through Facebook represents a

minimisation of distance that also recasts the distinction between public and private space

(Burkell et al., 2014), adding a new dimension entirely to the notion of drinking 'at home'.

This once 'comfortable' space of private consumption is now – especially via video-capable

phones – simultaneously integrated into other sites and incorporated into commercial realms

(van Dijk, 2013) in ways that complicate understandings of drinking locations as a focus of

analysis.

Public health implications

Public health approaches to alcohol-related harm prefer regulation of commercial activity

(Babor et al., 2010; Casswell, 2012) over weak measures – education and individual

responsibility – promoted by industry (Gordon & Anderson, 2011; Hawkins, Holden, &

McCambridge, 2012) and neoliberal market economy regimes (Bell, Salmon, &

McNaughton, 2011; Room, 2011). The aim of public health is to shape social environments

20

in ways that reduce consumption. Our findings bear particularly on the role of SNS in

producing virtual and material spaces, particularly through user-generated content, that both

normalise and encourage consumption.

Multiple public health issues are also raised in relation to user engagement with SNS and the

growing corporate alcohol interest in the online world (Jernigan, 2012; Mart et al., 2009;

Mosher, 2012; Nicholls, 2012). The business models of social media mean that the sale of

‘big data’ on consumer practice is an established and growing element in online marketing

(Beer, 2009; Fuchs, 2010). While drinking and drunkenness in SNS supposedly orient to

personally-selected social networks, they also entail new connectivity and practices that mean

commercial interests, including alcohol marketers, have live, located, personalised,

population-scale access to consumers (van Dijk 2013) upon which to build brand

relationships. The shift of SNS to mobile phone applications, the proliferation of commercial

platforms and the use of locational tracking systems, all serve to bring seller and consumer

closer together. These developments expand the potential for exposure of young people to

alcohol marketing (Atkinson et al., 2011; Jernigan & Rushman, 2014; Moraes et al., 2014;

Winpenny et al., 2013), which Anderson, de Bruijn, Angus, Gordon and Hastings (2009)

concluded is strongly associated with consumption. Such changes are likely to enhance

access to alcohol particularly for young people in virtual environments (e.g., online

purchase), where, as with offline consumption in private places, drinking is beyond the reach

of many of the regulatory provisions (hours of supply, age restrictions, host responsibility,

liquor bans, zero tolerance) that exist in licensed premises or public places.

Our data highlight combinations of attractions available in the convergence of alcohol and

social media cultures which go some way to explaining why messages from public health

(and other protective interests) that focus on the dangers of alcohol use are so unlikely to be

21

heard or taken up (Hutton, 2012). For public health efforts to reduce consumption, the

challenge lies in the personalised population-scale connectivity that is available through SNS

and how to address the emergence of what we have referred to elsewhere as mediated youth

drinking cultures (Goodwin et al., 2014).

Despite little evidence of impacts from public health social marketing campaigns, particularly

in the case of alcohol (Smith, Atkin, & Roznowski, 2006; Wolburg, 2005) including online

variants (Burton, Dadich, & Soboleva, 2013) innovative approaches are starting to show

some positive outcomes. Technologically-savvy, non-judgemental, youth-driven projects and

campaigns, focussed around identity, peer networks and self-determination are present in the

SNS space (Hamley & Carah, 2012; VicHealth, 2012). Given that SNS infrastructures can be

used at minimal cost, these instances represent a critical departure that could, if wisely

developed and supported, potentially weaken brand relationships, decrease exposure to online

marketing and ultimately, decrease population-level consumption.

Meanwhile it is important that there is a proliferation of diverse research approaches to this

domain to establish frequency, prevalence and wider significance of SNS-mediated drinking

behaviours. Equally there is a great need to critically interrogate the activities, methods and

impacts of commercial alcohol marketing in the creation and exploitation of SNS-mediated

intoxigenic environments (Carah, 2014).

Supported by the Marsden Fund Council from Government funding, administered by the Royal Society of New Zealand (contract MAU0911)

22

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