Critical Public Health

ISSN: 0958-1596 (Print) 1469-3682 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ccph20

Alcohol and social media: drinking and

drunkenness while online

Helen Moewaka Barnes, Timothy McCreanor, Ian Goodwin, Antonia Lyons,

Christine Griffin & Fiona Hutton

To cite this article: Helen Moewaka Barnes, Timothy McCreanor, Ian Goodwin, Antonia Lyons,
Christine Griffin & Fiona Hutton (2016) Alcohol and social media: drinking and drunkenness
while online, Critical Public Health, 26:1, 62-76, DOI: 10.1080/09581596.2015.1058921

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09581596.2015.1058921

Published online: 26 Jun 2015.

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 Critical Public Health, 2016
Vol. 26, No. 1, 6276, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09581596.2015.1058921

RESEARCH PAPER
Alcohol and social media: drinking and drunkenness while online
Helen Moewaka Barnesa, Timothy McCreanora*, Ian Goodwinb, Antonia Lyonsc,
Christine Grifnd and Fiona Huttone
a
Whariki Research Group, SHORE and Whariki Research Centre, School of Public Health,
Auckland, New Zealand; bSchool of English and Media Studies, Massey University, Wellington,
New Zealand; cSchool of Psychology, Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand; dDepartment
of Psychology, University of Bath, Claverton Down, Bath, UK; eInstitute of Criminology, School
of Social & Cultural Studies, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand
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(Received 3 December 2014; accepted 30 May 2015)

Our New Zealand-based research provides new insights, drawn from focus
group and interview data gathered from 18- to 25-year-olds, about how alco-
hol use and technology converge in drinking and drunkenness 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 ofine
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

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 (Grifths & 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 indige-
nous studies to reect on the salience of virtual social spaces in young peoples alcohol
cultures (Goodwin, Lyons, Grifn, & McCreanor, 2014; Mart, Mergendoller, & Simon,
2009; Nicholls, 2012).
While acknowledging SNS use produces benets for young people, our focus paral-
lels broader critical concerns that focus on how the commercialised nature of these plat-
forms inuences social life (Boyd, 2007, 2014; Burkell, Fortier, Wong, & Simpson,
2014; Hearn, 2008; Livingstone, 2008; Senft, 2008; Subrahmanyam & Greeneld,

*Corresponding author. Email: t.n.mccreanor@massey.ac.nz

2015 Taylor & Francis

 Critical Public Health 63

2008). Our data suggest that young peoples 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 Dijck (2013, p. 65)
argued, What used to be informal social activities in the private sphere friends hang-
ing 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
ofine drinking events and correlations between SNS use and consumption, exploring
young peoples drinking practices that occur while they are online. We analyse social
practices enabled by the unique characteristics of social media continuous networked
broadcast to ones peers, rapid image sharing, blurring of public/private domains and
the commercial foundation of platforms that inform us about the nature of relation-
ships between SNS use and alcohol consumption.
Our data include multiple accounts of intoxication and consumption while using
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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 peoples practices of alcohol-
related micro-celebrity self-presentation strategies online that involve amping up
ones social life (Senft, 2008). Both known and unknown audiences, including commer-
cial 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 peoples drinking and the culture of intoxication

Although young people, particularly those under 25 years, do not necessarily view alco-
hol 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 con-
sume alcohol to intoxication more frequently than other age groups. Such drinking con-
tributes 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. (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 1529 years.
In New Zealand, where local youth cultures of intoxication have been reinforced by
liberalising alcohol policy, research is consistent with international ndings. Since 2000,
alcohol policy liberalisation (Huckle, You, & Casswell, 2011) enhanced young peoples
access to alcohol and there have been increases in disorder arrests, excess breath alco-
hol 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, gen-
dered (Lyons & Willott, 2008; Willott & Lyons, 2012) heavy drinking practices. Young
people viewed such consumption as sociable, pleasurable and fun (Hutton, 2012; Lyons
 64 H. Moewaka Barnes et al.

& 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 proles. The role of SNS in inuencing pro-
drinking attitudes within peer groups was identied by Egan and Moreno (2011) in a
survey of male college students. In this study, over 85% of students Facebook proles
made positive references to alcohol use. They suggest that this compounds the problem
noted by Perkins, Haines, and Rice (2005) that students typically overestimate the
drinking of their peers, elevating expectations about norms of consumption.
Associations between displays of alcohol intoxication and problem drinking in uni-
versity student proles and alcohol-related problems as assessed via AUDIT were found
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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 were closely linked to alcohol-based events on campus. West-
gate, Neighbors, Heppner, Jahn, and Lindgren (2014), also working with US under-
graduates, found alcohol-related posts (statuses, comments and 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 proles, Litt and Stock (2011) found signicant differences in terms of inten-
tion to use alcohol among US 13- to 15-year-old students exposed to pro-alcohol
proles compared to those viewing more conservative forms. Another US study of over
2000 young people aged between 18 and 24 found an association between online
network densities of individuals and their alcohol consumption (Cook, Bauermeister,
Gordon-Messer, & Zimmerman, 2013). Using regression analyses of interconnections of
individuals in a network, higher levels of close ties were associated with elevated alco-
hol 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 insights into young peoples shared
understandings that underlie these associations. Focus group methods indicate that
young people in the US see alcohol references in Facebook as representing actual drink-
ing behaviours or efforts to enhance social standing (Moreno, Briner, Williams, Walker,
& Christakis, 2009). Grifths and Casswell (2010) studied young peoples engagements
with Bebo, showing it played a role in their drinking cultures through sharing informa-
tion about alcohol, telling drinking stories and developing online identities. Niland,
Lyons, Goodwin, and Hutton (2014) found that drinking photos and stories on New
Zealand participants Facebook pages were embedded into their drinking cultures, evok-
ing camaraderie, acceptance and belonging within social networks. Sharing photographs
of peer-group alcohol consumption 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 consump-
tion through strengthening pro-drinking attitudes, affecting perceived peer norms and
 Critical Public Health 65

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, 2014) 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 identi-
ties, across ethnicity, social class and gender. We collected qualitative audio-visual data
from focus groups and individual digital tracking data in multiple geographical loca-
tions, between 2010 and the end of 2012 (Lyons et al., 2014). Here, we shift beyond
existing studies of representations of drinking in SNS proles, to examine overlapping,
SNS-enabled practices around drunkenness and drinking while online, focussing on
participant meanings and the implications for public health.
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Methods
Following institutional ethical approval, we recruited 141 participants across 34 focus
groups through word-of-mouth and snowballing techniques from multiple start-points,
including workplaces, universities and community groups. A target person invited their
friends to 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 Faafane participants (3%). Faafane is a term used, with some varia-
tions, in Pasika cultures for people born male but whose spirit is female. Participants
self-identied as belonging to one of three ethnic groups: Maori, the indigenous popula-
tion; Pasika, peoples of Pacic Islands ancestry; and Pakeha, in this case people lar-
gely of European descent. All participants were aged 1825 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 and 4
mixed), twelve of predominantly Maori participants (2 all female, 1 all male and
9 mixed) and ten of predominantly Pasika 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, which lasted 12 h, around socialising, alcohol consumption
and drinking practices, took place in peoples 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 Pasika 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 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
 66 H. Moewaka Barnes et al.

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 ve excerpts about drinking practices and social media
from focus groups and one individual interview excerpt. These data have been chosen
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because they both articulate with the broad data set 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
rst pattern, participants have been drinking ofine and come to SNS intoxicated; in
the second, young people are electively online as they consume alcohol. We acknowl-
edge 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.

Drunk while online

The full data set 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 reecting on past regrets, sometimes formulated
guides to practice such as banning themselves from going online when drunk to min-
imise 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 youre
like awwwww delete it.
(Maori FG 3)

Aroha reects that drunken Facebook use amounts to self-inicted 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 malevo-
lent, activity of altering another persons Facebook page without permission. Arohas
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 amplied in the next excerpt.
 Critical Public Health 67

Ben elaborated on what can happen when intoxicated comments posted online
become a permanent record.
Excerpt 2
Ben: You just start talking shit. [laughing] And like cause you you wont hesitate to
write stuff. If something annoys you [laughs] youll just [mimes hands typing]
comment on it and let them have it. But the thing is its not like a conversation
where like someone can forget it. Its in print and its there. [laughs] Its always
there.
(Pakeha FG 5)

The use of phrases such as talking shit and let them have it signals behaviours
beyond the commonplace. Drunken performance impairs capacity for reexive 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-presenta-
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tion, 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. Bens repeated laughter is ironic, acknowledging both the plea-
sures of the moment (you wont hesitate) and the risks, in terms of unfettered criticism
of others remaining after the fact. This shows the complexity of the shifting temporali-
ties 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 benets 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 under-
standing of an event that occurred in this peer group. They straddle our thematic divi-
sion between intoxication and consumption since, in the rst 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 fty photos and I was drunk I was loading them all up to Face-
book 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: Theres 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
 68 H. Moewaka Barnes et al.

A webcam in this context is a drinking occasion conducted with the onboard cam-
era 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 (Hadeld, 2011, p. 64) against the expense of the night-time
economy. Participants relay a sense that this practice is familiar and 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 revisit 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 inte-
gration of intoxication and identity in cyberspace. These dimensions of drinking pro-
duce new pleasures dependent on computer mediation, self-monitoring and the
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presence of an online audience, insights that are reinforced in the excerpt from Alexs
individual interview.

Drinking while online

The individual interview with Alex amplied issues arising from the focus group data.
At the interviewers 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 Im not really, I dont have that many photos, so I dont have albums as such.
Ive 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 weve got to get onto that
Alex: With the webcam thing
[scrolls through the photo sequence]
T: Yeah.
Alex: So this is
T: Who took those photos?
Alex: Webcam
T: Oh thats you were talking about that in the focus group
Alex: Yeah
T: I didnt 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, theyre loading faster, its 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]
 Critical Public Health 69

T: Oh yeah he was saying

Alex: down here [reads out message] haha they are the funniest photos its actually like
a sequence in one lot u fully see Chris drinking his beer from start to nish 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 drunkenness and, in the focus group, Alex stated that he was drunk
while posting the album online.
Interestingly throughout the sequence, the young people remain approximately in
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their starting positions, actively clustered around the camera, talking, interacting, laugh-
ing, 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 audi-
ence 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 dur-
ing the session, making it available to his networks in real time. In his nal turn in the
transcript, Alex navigated to the newsfeed on his page, reading out an appreciative
comment on the album and showing one like, conrming 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 thumb-
nails 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 specically around purpo-
sively 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, these behaviours are fundamentally social and entail intentional engagement
with known audiences. The data also illustrate the complexity of these online beha-
viours because, in contrast to the caution and ambivalence expressed in excerpts 1 and
2, they entail encouragement of drinking.
Excerpt 5
T: So you mean people talking about [drinking online]?
Jane: Oh yeah. [looks at Hays]
Hays: Oh these Codys 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 afrms accuracy. Hays
 70 H. Moewaka Barnes et al.

comments are proffered as examples of what she might post as messages during a
drinking session, offering branded encouragements to her virtual audience. The commu-
nicative intensity and immediacy of the personalised endorsement of products would be
persuasive to peers.
A nal excerpt amplies the social dimensions of such practices.
Excerpt 6
Amohia: Whenever were having drinks at my girlfriends house, well 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 youre having a drink
Amohia: Uploading statuses, telling everyone that youre 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 dont know just like sending it out, or whos going
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out tonight?
Khloe: Yeah whos going out tonight?, whos 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 youre 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 engage-
ment and participation. In these data, we are not privy 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 con-
sumption is mutually reinforcing. This SNS-mediated drinking appears to facilitate the
planning of further drinking, to segue smoothly into subsequent ofine 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 data set, providing insights
around the conuence of drinking practices and SNS. Familiar understandings about the
dis-inhibition 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 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 dis-inhibited 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
 Critical Public Health 71

environments can be ends in themselves, positive associations with relevant social

domains are likely to contribute to the perceived value and normalcy of these beha-
viours. 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 data set 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
conicts, unwanted friend requests, account tampering from lax security, altered sta-
tuses, 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 difculties, the emergence of drinking
cultures in the SNS environment was seen positively by participants and enhanced
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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 ndings reported here elucidate little-researched practices around alcohol use,
showing that people go online when they are drunk and are also deliberately or inciden-
tally drinking while online. Clearly, these are social behaviours and performances (often
visually mediated) that orient to known audiences, afrming understandings of the
importance of peer-group processes to the maintenance of intoxigenic environments
(Grifths & 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, amplication 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 ndings 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 Senfts (2008) ideas about branding self and micro-culture.
Participants make use of the affordances of onboard camera technology and Facebook,
creating a specically performative record of their pre-loading and posting it with
a known audience in mind, as a mark of amplied sociality, popularity and
distinction within their networks. Since our data were gathered the eforescence of the
Neknominate drinking game via You Tube (Wikipedia, 2014) in early 2014 sug-
gested 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 Dijck, 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 exploita-
tion of SNS user behaviours by unknown audiences including alcohol marketers and
sellers.
 72 H. Moewaka Barnes et al.

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 encourage-
ments 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
Codys Bourbon (named in Excerpt 5) provided a link, http://www.youtube.com/play
list?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 specic 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
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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 Dijck, 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 activ-
ity (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 environ-
ments in ways that reduce consumption. Our ndings 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 ele-
ment 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 Dijck, 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., 2014), 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 ofine consumption in private places, drinking is beyond the reach of many of the
 Critical Public Health 73

regulatory provisions (hours of supply, age restrictions, host responsibility, liquor bans
or zero tolerance) that exist in licensed premises or public places.
Our data highlight combinations of attractions available in the convergence of alco-
hol 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 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-
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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 signicance of
SNS-mediated drinking behaviours. Equally, there is a great need to critically interro-
gate the activities, methods and impacts of commercial alcohol marketing in the
creation and exploitation of SNS-mediated intoxigenic environments (Carah, 2014).

Disclosure statement
No potential conict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding
This work was supported by the Marsden Fund Council from Government funding, administered
by the Royal Society of New Zealand (contract MAU0911).

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