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AUTHORS
Antonia C. Lyonsa
Tim McCreanorb
Fiona Huttonc
Ian Goodwind
Helen Moewaka Barnesb
Christine Griffine
Kerryellen Vromanf
Acushla Dee O’Carrollb
Patricia Nilanda
Lina Samub
Flaunting it on Facebook:
Young adults, drinking cultures
and the cult oF celebritY
research
report
March
2014
a School of Psychology, Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand
b Wha¯ riki Research Team, Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand
c Institute of Criminology, Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand
d School of English & Media Studies, Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand
e Department of Psychology, University of Bath, Bath, United Kingdom
f College of Health and Human Services, University of New Hampshire, Durham, USA
Published by Massey University School of Psychology
PO Box 756
Wellington 6140
New Zealand
Website www.massey.ac.nz
Format: PDF
Publication Date: March 2014
ISBN: ISBN 978-0-473-28172-4
Format: Paperback
Publication Date: March 2014
ISBN: ISBN 978-0-473-28170-0
This report should be cited as:
Lyons, A.C., McCreanor, T., Hutton, F., Goodwin, I., Moewaka
Barnes, H., Griffin, C. et al. (2014). Flaunting it on Facebook:
Young adults, drinking cultures and the cult of celebrity.
Wellington, NZ: Massey University School of Psychology.
Copyright © Antonia Lyons; Tim McCreanor; Fiona Hutton; Ian
Goodwin; Helen Moewaka Barnes; Christine Griffin; Kerryellen
Vroman; Acushla Dee O’Carroll; Patricia Niland; Lina Samu
acknoWledgeMents
The research described in this report was supported by the Marsden
Fund Council from New Zealand Government funding, administered by
the Royal Society of New Zealand (contract MAU0911). We would like to
gratefully acknowledge the Marsden Fund and their support throughout
the duration of this project.
We would also like to acknowledge and give enormous thanks to Jessica
Glen and Anna Tonks, who were research assistants at various times
throughout the running of this research. Their enthusiasm for the project,
alongside their excellent organisational and communication skills, were
greatly appreciated by all of the team. Anna thanks also for your excellent
technical skills in undertaking screen recording for your own Masters
project on student drinking practices and Facebook. Acknowledgements
and thanks to Venessa Green who also worked as a research assistant on
the project in its early stages. In 2011 Venessa was tragically killed in a
motor accident. Rest in peace Venessa.
Thanks also to Ross Hebden and Michelle Pedersen, both of whom
provided great enthusiasm for the topic and lots of insight into both new
networking technologies and drinking cultures. Their respective Masters
and Honours research projects provided a way of piloting some of the
new methods we employed and we’re very grateful for their input. We’re
delighted that Ross is now undertaking doctoral research to extend and
further explore many of our key findings.
We would also like to gratefully thank Dr Lanuola Asiasiga for her support,
advice and guidance regarding the Pasifika arm of the research. Her
mentorship and sharing of knowledge have been invaluable.
Finally, a heartfelt thanks from all of us to the young adults who took part
in this research. You gave your time, shared your experiences, answered
our questions, some of you showed us your Facebook pages and talked
to us about your photos and other online activity. We are very grateful for
your participation.
contents
Acknowledgements 2
Summary 4
Background 4
Aims and objectives 6
Methods 6
Stage 1: Friendship group discussions 6
Stage 2: Individual interviews 6
Stage 3: Website and online material 7
Data management and analytic techniques 7
Findings 7
Conclusions and future research 11
References 12
Appendix: Research outputs 14
4ReseaRch RepoRt
March 2014
suMMarY
Young adults in Aotearoa/New Zealand (NZ) regularly engage
in heavy drinking episodes with groups of friends within
a collective culture of intoxication to ‘have fun’ and ‘be
sociable’. This population has also rapidly increased their use
of new social networking technologies (e.g. mobile camera/
video phones; Facebook and YouTube) and are said to be
obsessed with identity, image and celebrity. This research
project explored the ways in which new technologies are
being used by a range of young people (and others, including
marketers) in drinking practices and drinking cultures in
Aotearoa/NZ. It also explored how these technologies
impact on young adults’ behaviours and identities, and how
this varies across young adults of diverse ethnicities (Ma¯ ori
[indigenous people of NZ], Pasifika [people descended
from the Pacific Islands] and Pa¯ keha¯ [people of European
descent]), social classes and genders.
We collected data from a large and diverse sample of young
adults aged 18-25 years employing novel and innovative
methodologies across three data collection stages. In total
141 participants took part in 34 friendship focus group
discussions (12 Pa¯ keha¯ , 12 Ma¯ ori and 10 Pasifika groups)
while 23 young adults showed and discussed their Facebook
pages during an individual interview that involved screen-
capture software and video recordings. Popular online
material regarding drinking alcohol was also collected (via
groups, interviews, and web searches), providing a database
of 487 links to relevant material (including websites, apps,
and games). Critical and in-depth qualitative analyses across
these multimodal datasets were undertaken.
Key findings demonstrated that social technologies play a
crucial role in young adults’ drinking cultures and processes
of identity construction. Consuming alcohol to a point of
intoxication was a commonplace leisure-time activity for
most of the young adult participants, and social network
technologies were fully integrated into their drinking cultures.
Facebook was employed by all participants and was used
before, during and following drinking episodes. Uploading
and sharing photos on Facebook was particularly central to
young people’s drinking cultures and the ongoing creation of
their identities. This involved a great deal of Facebook ‘work’
to ensure appropriate identity displays such as tagging (the
addition of explanatory or identifying labels) and untagging
photos.
Being visible online was crucial for many young adults,
and they put significant amounts of time and energy into
updating and maintaining Facebook pages, particularly with
material regarding drinking practices and events. However
this was not consistent across the sample, and our findings
revealed nuanced and complex ways in which people from
different ethnicities, genders and social classes engaged
with drinking cultures and new technologies in different
ways, reflecting their positioning within the social structure.
Pa¯ keha¯ shared their drinking practices online with relatively
little reflection, while Pasifika and Ma¯ ori participants were
more likely to discuss avoiding online displays of drinking
and demonstrated greater reflexive self-surveillance. Females
spoke of being more aware of normative expectations around
gender than males, and described particular forms of online
identity displays (e.g. moderated intake, controlled self-
determination). Participants from upper socio-economic
groups expressed less concern than others about both
drinking and posting material online. Celebrity culture
was actively engaged with, in part at least, as a means of
expressing what it is to be a young adult in contemporary
society, and reinforcing the need for young people to engage
in their own everyday practices of ‘celebritising’ themselves
through drinking cultures online.
Alcohol companies employed social media to market
their products to young people in sophisticated ways that
meant the campaigns and actions were rarely perceived as
marketing. Online alcohol marketing initiatives were actively
appropriated by young people and reproduced within their
Facebook pages to present tastes and preferences, facilitate
social interaction, construct identities, and more generally
develop cultural capital. These commercial activities
within the commercial platforms that constitute social
networking systems contribute heavily to a general ‘culture
of intoxication’ while simultaneously allowing young people
to ‘create’ and ‘produce’ themselves online via the sharing of
consumption ‘choices’, online interactions and activities.
background
This project is situated at the intersection of three major
contemporary social concerns: young adults’ normalised
culture of heavy drinking; their high uptake and use of new
social networking technologies; and the construction of
young adults’ identities within current neoliberal society.
Knowledge and theorising in these three areas was drawn on
and integrated to systematically investigate contemporary
drinking cultures across ethnicities, genders, and social
classes in Aotearoa/NZ.
First, many young people are involved in normalised practices
around heavy drinking, which they view as pleasurable,
involving having fun and being sociable (Lyons & Willott,
2008; McCreanor, Moewaka Barnes, Gregory, Borell & Kaiwai,
2008; Szmigin et al., 2008). Researchers have documented
factors which have contributed to this development
(Measham & Brain, 2005), including the commodification of
pleasure (Measham, 2004) into commercialised packages
that have been termed ‘cultures of intoxication’ (Measham,
2006) and ‘intoxigenic environments’ (McCreanor, Moewaka
Barnes et al., 2008). Stories about drinking are told and retold
amongst friends, playing a crucial role in identity construction
(Giles, 1999; Griffin et al., 2009; McCreanor, Moewaka
Barnes, Gregory, Kaiwai & Borell, 2005; McCreanor,
Greenaway, Moewaka Barnes, Borell, & Gregory, 2005) and
maintaining friendships (Sheehan & Ridge, 2001). Increasingly
drinking stories are shared online, often using digital images
(Skinstad, 2008). In Aotearoa/NZ specific alcoholic beverages
are consumed to signal taste and identity (Lyons & Willott,
2008; McCreanor, Greenaway, et al., 2005; McCreanor,
Moewaka Barnes, et al., 2005) and drinking patterns vary
across ethnicity, class and gender (Ministry of Health, 2007;
McEwan, Campbell, Lyons & Swain 2013; Wells, Baxter, &
Schaaf, 2007). While much research has investigated youth
drinking behaviours, relatively little academic attention has
focused on drinking cultures, which are located within an
increasingly technologically mediated world (McCreanor et al.,
2013; Murthy, 2008) saturated with media images of youthful
drunken excess, including ‘drunken celebs’. Young NZ adults
see heavy drinking as part of a national identity (Braun, 2008;
Lyons & Willott, 2008; McCreanor, Moewaka Barnes et al,
2005; McEwan et al., 2013). The embeddedness of drinking
cultures in daily relationships (Niland, Lyons, Goodwin &
Hutton, 2013), identity negotiations and new technologies
has not yet received any sustained analytic attention.
Flaunting it on Facebook:
Young adults, drinking cultures and the cult of celebritY 5
Second, young adults have also rapidly increased their
uptake and use of new social networking technologies (e.g.,
mobile phones and social networking sites (SNS) such
as Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube) (Williams, 2008).
Facebook now has over a billion users (Facebook, 2014).
Several key features distinguish SNS: 1) they blur or remove
boundaries between public/private spaces (Papacharissi,
2009), private identity/public spaces (Papacharissi, 2009),
persona and user/consumer (Hearn, 2008); 2) they are often
seen as online extensions of face-to-face relationships (boyd
& Ellison, 2008; Williams, 2008); 3) they are ‘sticky’; that is,
users visit them frequently (Hearn, 2008; Rosen, 2006); and 4)
graphic images (photographs, video) are significant (Williams,
2008) and continuously rejuvenated (Papacharissi, 2009),
functioning to visually privilege social connections and offline
socialising (Livingstone, 2008). Research demonstrates that
young people “are living life online and in public via these
sites” (Subrahmanyam & Greenfield, 2008, p. 417) and they
are integral to identity, relationships and lifestyles (boyd,
2007; Livingstone, 2008). The multibillion dollar acquisitions
of networking sites by global media interests, and the initial
public offering of Facebook as the biggest in Internet history,
highlight how social networking online is increasingly owned
and controlled by corporate commercial interests. Innovative
ways of turning user-bases into a ‘product’, that is a highly
valuable commodity to be sold to third parties (like alcohol
corporations), follows closely on the popular uptake of
social networking services. Recent research demonstrates
high levels of alcohol-related content on SNS (Beullens &
Schepers, 2013; Egan & Moreno, 2011) that has been linked
to a desire to display a highly valued ‘heavy drinking’ identity
(Griffiths & Casswell, 2010; Ridout, Campbell & Ellis, 2012).
Drinking and intoxication content on Facebook, MySpace
and YouTube is seen as positive and funny by young people
who share it widely (Morgan, Snelson & Elison-Bowers,
2010). Such content normalises a culture of intoxication
(Griffiths & Casswell, 2010; McCreanor et al., 2013). Research
efforts have not kept up with the use of such technologies as
normal parts of young adults’ routine social lives.
Third, critical social theory has argued that discourses of
individual freedom, self-expression and authenticity demand
that we live our lives as if this was part of a biographical
project of self-realisation in a society in which we all appear
to have ‘free’ choice to become whoever we want to be and
to consume whatever we want (Giddens, 1991; Rose, 1999).
This is manifest in a globalised culture of celebrity, self-
commodification and excess which has particular resonances
for young people (Duits & van Romondt Vis, 2009). The
obsession with identity, image and celebrity (Hopkins, 2002)
as well as constant innovation and change (Hearn, 2008)
requires that the reflexive project of the self (Giddens, 1991)
involves continual (re)creation and maintenance, an ongoing
cycle of self-invention. Such highly stylised self construction
can be seen across several commercially mediated cultural
forms (including SNS platforms) where individuals celebrate
and celebritise the self, and in doing so, construct their
identities (Hearn, 2008). This project of endlessly (re)
crafting and performing an ‘authentic’ self is contradictory,
particularly in a neoliberal social order in which people are
supposed to have a stable, resilient core identity (Walkerdine,
2003). Nevertheless these developments have been
enthusiastically endorsed and catalysed by the discipline
and practice of marketing. Marketing encourages subjects
to actively engage with branded products and services in
developing and shaping their sense of selfhood. Furthermore,
however, campaigns have moved beyond mere niche
targeting to developing relationships with individuals tailored
to their co-created needs (McCreanor, Moewaka Barnes et
al., 2005; Venkatesh, 1999; Viser, 1999). At its apex this logic
places identity at the very core of the marketing and branding
process, which in turn contributes to the normalisation of
a broader culture of self-promotion. Thus it has become
possible to speak of the self-as-brand, or the performance of
one’s own ‘celebrity brand’, as a key part of ‘successful’ self-
creation throughout the life course (Hearn, 2008).
Relatively little systematic empirical research has investigated
the ways in which ‘neo-liberalism’ impacts on people’s
everyday lives, and how everyday life is negotiated,
reproduced and transformed. New media technologies are
becoming thoroughly embedded in the routines of young
people’s lives (boyd & Ellison, 2008; Ministry of Health, 2007),
and enable individuals to ‘celebritise the self’ by sharing
information on the Internet about their experiences, often
about their drinking cultures. These reflect widespread media
accounts of drunken celebrities, reinforcing social norms
around gender, sexuality, ethnicity and class (Hesmondhalgh,
2005; Skeggs, 2005). Commerce is quick to lead here,
participating by providing a vast array of magazines,
newspapers, movies, websites, promotions, competitions
and other materials that resource, articulate and amplify
these trends. Our research sought to empirically investigate
these issues to provide understandings and knowledge
regarding identity negotiation, drinking practices and drinking
cultures among young adults in Aotearoa/NZ from a diversity
of backgrounds.
6ReseaRch RepoRt
March 2014
aiMs and
objectives
This research aimed to provide in-depth understandings of
young adults’ drinking cultures and the roles that new media
technologies and the current fascination with celebrity play in
these cultures. To achieve these overall goals, a number of
specific objectives were developed, as follows:
1. Identify how social network technologies are implicated in
young people’s drinking cultures.
2. Explore how versions of identity are being created,
negotiated, and performed through drinking practices, for
example via the circulation of drinking stories and public
displays on SNS.
3. Gain insight into the role SNS and digital photographs
play in drinking cultures and identify the ways in which
images relating to drinking stories are produced and
displayed for others to view.
4. Develop understandings of the ways in which identity
negotiations and performances vary across ethnicity,
gender, and social class.
5. Gain insight into the extent of young adults’ use of new
technologies to produce their own version of ‘everyday
celebrity’ and how this relates to their drinking practices
and cultures.
6. Develop new theoretical understandings of the processes
of identity construction and negotiation through drinking
cultures and new media technologies.
7. Extend current theoretical frameworks on subjectivity and
self-creation and their centrality to the dominant neoliberal
culture where fame and attention are significantly valued.
Methods
To achieve the research objectives, we employed a three-
stage data collection process which included face-to-face
and Internet-based methods in combination with multiple
analytic methods including thematic and discursive analysis,
media studies approaches, kaupapa Ma¯ ori methods, website
analyses and multimodal discourse analysis.
Stage 1: Friendship group discussions
In total, 141 participants took part in 34 friendship focus
group discussions about socializing, drinking practices,
drinking cultures and social networking. Twelve of the
groups consisted of predominantly Pa¯ keha¯ participants,
12 consisted of predominantly Ma¯ ori participants, and 10
included predominantly Pasifika participants. These groups
were facilitated by the three PhD students on the research
team, namely Patricia Niland (Pa¯ keha¯ participants), Acushla
Dee O’Carroll (Ma¯ ori participants) and Lina Samu (Pasifika
participants) each of whom worked with groups of their own
ethnicity.
Group discussions, which lasted from 1-2 hours, were
videotaped and transcribed verbatim by the PhD students.
Participant ages ranged from 18-25 years with a mean age
of 20.2 years (SD = 2.1). There were 80 female participants
(56.7%), 57 male participants (40.4%), and 4 Fa’afafine/
Fakaleiti/Aka Vaine1 (2.8%). The groups included 9 with all
female participants, 6 with all male participants, and 19
with both males and females. The groups were also diverse
in terms of location, undertaken in a range of settings,
including large cities and smaller provincial towns throughout
Aotearoa/NZ. Groups ranged in the socioeconomic status of
their participants (from poor working class through to very
wealthy), as well as occupations (including employed and
unemployed young people, single parents, and students).
Stage 2: Individual interviews
Some of the friendship group participants from stage one
were subsequently invited to take part in a one-on-one
interview with the same researcher who had facilitated their
discussion group. In total, 18 of these participants took
part in individual interviews, and 5 new participants were
also interviewed. Interviews were again led by the 3 PhD
student researchers: 7 interviews were conducted with
young Pa¯ keha¯ adults; 8 with young Ma¯ ori adults; 8 with
young Pasifika adults. There were 15 females, 7 males, and
1 Fa’afafine participants interviewed. Their ages ranged from
18-25 (M= 21 yrs; SD= 2.4). The interviews were run with a
laptop computer alongside the participant, and participants
were asked to show and talk about their Facebook pages,
their photos, any material related to their drinking practices
or alcohol, and also discuss the ways in which they used
social networking and engaged in online environments. The
interviews were videotaped and screen capture software
was used to provide a digital record of all activity on the
laptop screen. The interviews were transcribed verbatim by
the PhD researchers and Transana software was employed
to collate 3 strands of data: video recording, transcript, and
screen recording (providing a ‘multimodal’ dataset). This
qualitative software programme facilitates “the transcription,
analysis and management of digital video or audio data”
(Mavrikis & Geraniou, 2011, p.246). These strands were time-
synchonised and enabled the researchers to view what was
1 These terms are used in Pasifika cultures for people born male but whose spirit is female
Flaunting it on Facebook:
Young adults, drinking cultures and the cult of celebritY 7
being said (transcript), alongside hearing the talk (audio) and
watching both the participant (visual) and the screen activity
record simultaneously.
Stage 3: Website and online material
The data collected in stages 1 and 2 of the project was
replete with examples of favoured websites and online
activity that young adults engaged with regularly. The
investigators and research assistants also regularly shared
relevant online material they had encountered with the team
via an email list. This ongoing information regarding websites
and online material was collated into a database (with links
and screen captures) that was kept up-to-date throughout
the project. The final database includes 487 entries (275 from
the friendship groups, 131 from the interviews, and 81 from
the email list archive). Facebook was the most frequently
mentioned website by both group and individual interview
participants (64% and 63% respectively), followed by other
SNS (12% and 13% respectively).
Data management and analytic techniques
Multiple analytic techniques were used to interrogate the
datasets. Thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) and
discursive analyses (Willig, 2001) were undertaken with the
transcripts of discussions and interviews. We developed
our own analytic techniques to examine the multimodal
data, based on previous work examining the complexity
of web pages, websites, web users and web genres and
simultaneous interactions across sites (Baldry & Thibault,
2006; Kress, 2010; Norris, 2004). We engaged in regular
team discussions (face-to-face and online using Scopia
software) with named team members, PhD students, and
other postgraduate students involved. This was essential
in building team cohesion as we employed diverse analytic
perspectives from a range of disciplinary backgrounds (e.g.
psychology, media studies, cultural studies, public health,
criminology and Ma¯ ori and Pasifika research) and also
ensured that our interpretations were culturally appropriate
for all three ethnicity groups.
The doctoral students carried out multiple analyses of
data with different broad areas of focus. These have been
published as separate research papers in collaboration with
their supervisors, and bound into theses with contextual and
linking materials. Senior investigators have also collaborated
in various ways to conduct multiple analyses around issues
of importance and salience to the project objectives. Some
of these have been published and some are currently in
process. A list of all current outputs is provided in the
Appendix.
Findings
Below we outline the results of the in-depth analyses in terms
of each of our specified research objectives.
1) To identify how social network technologies are
implicated in young people’s drinking cultures.
All analyses demonstrated that social network technologies
were fully integrated into young people’s drinking cultures.
Facebook was by far the most widely used social networking
site, and all participants were members of Facebook. It
played an important role for the majority of the participants
before drinking (organising events, posting updates), during
drinking (updates, photo sharing, meeting and socialising,
interacting online), and following drinking episodes (uploading
photos, tagging and untagging photos, commenting on
photos). Facebook offered participants a new user-driven
way to share drinking experiences and enact their drinking
cultures, both via text and visually.
Facebook was routinely embedded in people’s everyday
lives. The technological affordances of Facebook offered
many opportunities to extend and enhance the pleasures of
heavy social drinking especially through the pervasive activity
of uploading photos of drinking episodes, to be shared
and commented on across friendship networks. Individual
interviews demonstrated that photos posted on Facebook
of nights out drinking were highly valued and essential to
drinking cultures. Here even ‘negative’ events (e.g. violence,
vomiting or accidents due to intoxication) were able to be
reframed in ‘positive’ ways and shared using humour and a
general interpretative frame that constructed such harms as
participants having fun with friends. However, as we discuss
below, this feature was nuanced by ethnicity, gender and
class.
Facebook was also widely used to receive information (via
news feeds on smartphones) about real-time alcohol (and
other) promotions at stores, bars and clubs (as discussed
more fully below). In this way Facebook was able to make
drinking cultures far more ‘visible’, enabling young people to
embed stories and photos about drinking in their everyday
lives which they shared with ‘friends’. This encouraged an
online culture of heavy drinking, normalising it and making it
routine and mundane, which is exactly how the participants
in stages one and two described these alcohol-related
practices. Stage 3 highlighted that Facebook content was
saturated with commercial alcohol marketing material. In this
way mundane Facebook use could potentially alter people’s
perceptions of what it is to be a young adult in contemporary
Aotearoa/NZ, with intoxigenic socialising and heavy drinking
represented as normal and inextricably linked.
2) To explore how versions of identity are being created,
negotiated, and performed through drinking practices,
for example via the circulation of drinking stories and
public displays on social networking sites
The young adults in this research created and recreated their
identities via their drinking practices and their subsequent
online displays, integrating online alcohol content into their
everyday practices of constructing their identities. The
continual circulation of drinking stories online, as well as the
uploading of photos and associated practices of ongoing
tagging and commenting, highlighted the ways in which
drinking practices represented on Facebook contributed
to the creation and display of edited versions of the self.
Most of the participants described spending a large amount
8ReseaRch RepoRt
March 2014
of time and effort in tagging and untagging themselves in
uploaded photos (their own, as well as other people’s) to
present a particular version of the self that they are happy
with being publicly displayed. There were tensions involved
here as well, especially when ‘friends’ posted unflattering or
inappropriate photos of them. Participants spent much time
online ensuring their ‘drinking’ identity was ‘just right’; that is,
displaying drinking and having fun, but not appearing ‘too’
drunk or looking unattractive. These rules, however, varied by
social groups as for some young adults (particularly tertiary
students), the ‘too drunk’ photos provided participants with
cultural capital, contributing to humour and shared fun within
their group of friends. Additionally, for some (particularly
female) Ma¯ ori and Pasifika participants, any photos which
included them with an alcoholic drink were off-limits for
Facebook posting due to the negative judgments that could
potentially be made. Thus the ways in which participants
negotiated public displays of drinking varied by social group,
and were intimately linked to careful identity constructions.
3) To gain insight into the role SNS and digital imaging
play in drinking cultures and identify the ways in which
images relating to drinking stories are produced and
displayed for others to view.
The research found that photos on Facebook were crucial
within young people’s drinking cultures and the ongoing
presentation of (and online social interaction about) their
drinking stories. The importance of photos cannot be
underestimated for these young people, with perhaps the
exception of the young adults from lower socioeconomic
groups who were not so invested in their online identity,
perhaps because of limited internet access and not having
the portable new media devices that many of the other
participants used (e.g. smartphones). There was clear
gendered dimension to taking photos within friendship
groups when engaging in socialising and drinking, with
this being seen as a female activity. However, while male
participants did not take or upload photos to Facebook very
frequently (in relative terms), they did describe investing
time and energy to tagging and untagging photos of
themselves (posted by others) following a night out, and
paying meticulous attention to their appearance within these
photos and in the online environment. Additionally, photos
were always about drinking in a social environment – posting
photos of oneself or anybody else drinking alone was strongly
sanctioned and raised the possibility of drinking ‘problems’.
Thus particular kinds of images, photos and stories were
created, uploaded and shared with friends online, leading
to ongoing interactions and comments for days, weeks and
even months following a drinking episode.
Furthermore, the individual interviews demonstrated strongly
that the meanings of these photos could not necessarily be
read off the photos themselves. Instead, participants were
able to speak at great length about what each image meant,
and why it was on their photo page, including photos in
which they were absent (e.g. just out of the screen shot), and
images that reminded them of a negative experience but did
not depict it (e.g. just before falling down the stairs or getting
in a fight). Thus the images were almost always positive, even
when they actually referenced negative experiences, and the
covert meanings were only available for friends who were
‘in the know’ by being there at the time. In this way photos
on Facebook functioned to create in-groups with shared
meanings about the photos, and this distinguished these
groups from broader audiences including parents and other
relatives. They also functioned to effectively ‘airbrush’ the
drinking culture such that from the outside it appeared to be
all about fun, pleasure and positive experiences with friends
(Niland, Lyons, Goodwin & Hutton, 2014).
4. Develop understandings of the ways in which identity
negotiations and performances vary across ethnicity,
gender, and social class.
The data from stages one and two are unique as they are
derived from three different ethnicity groups, as well as male,
female and Fa’afafine participants from a range of socio-
economic groups. Drinking practices, social networking,
identity negotiations and performances were in some ways
incredibly consistent across this diverse sample (e.g. in terms
of frequency of drinking), but also starkly contrasting in other
ways.
Consuming alcohol to a point of intoxication was a
commonplace leisure-time activity for most of the young
people in the sample. This was apparent across ethnicity
groups, and there were similarities in terms of the importance
of alcohol to social lives. However despite similarities in
frequencies, amounts and experiences of drinking alcohol
in our data, there were also clear cultural differences in
drinking practices. Pasifika participants gave a strong sense
of drinking being highly valued within the peer-group but
more widely understood as transgressive of their cultural
norms. While drinking at clubs/bars, local pubs and domestic
settings was commonplace and frequent for some Pasifika
participants, there were a number who did not drink and
many who hid their consumption from family and church
in particular. Ma¯ ori participants clearly valued peer-group
drinking at commercial and private venues, but there were
more accounts of drinking with intergenerational family
groups. They also gave numerous accounts of taking actions
(e.g. within SNS), to avoid publicising drinking to family, work
and community connections. Among Pa¯ keha¯ participants
there was a pervasive trope of drinking as a routine,
necessary and valued activity within peer social events in all
the venues referred to above. Little sense of sanction was
attached to this status quo and the hegemonic understanding
was that they were established drinkers in a Pa¯ keha¯ regime
that was a central and valued part of adult life and identity
in Aotearoa/NZ. In this way identity negotiations around
drinking and social networking involved more reflexive self-
surveillance by young Ma¯ ori and Pasifika adults, although
class was relevant here and middle class Pa¯ keha¯ participants
were also reflexive about their online posting.
In terms of gender, this research demonstrates that young
women are under surveillance and subjected to normative
expectations in different ways when drinking alcohol
compared to their male counterparts. The young men
were much more likely to describe the high consuming,
extroverted, social assertiveness practice of hegemonic
masculine drinking, while young women described needing
to show moderated intake, controlled self-determination
and social availability. These gendered features were most
widely apparent in the talk of our Pa¯ keha¯ participants; as a
result of social marginalisation, Ma¯ ori and Pasifika women
were already more aware of the surveillance of their lives and
drinking practices and consequently of the requirement to
display self-control around alcohol. This is a strong example
of how ethnicity and gender interacted to affect identity
negotiations and practices.
Social class and employment status were also central to the
ways in which participants engaged in drinking practices and
subsequently shared these online. Participants from upper
socio-economic groups appeared to feel exempt from some
Flaunting it on Facebook:
Young adults, drinking cultures and the cult of celebritY 9
of the concerns that others expressed about their drinking
and postings about drinking. Participants from middle socio-
economic groups engaged in similar drinking practices,
and sometimes considered Facebook material in terms of
employment or future employers, whereas those from lower
socio-economic groups frequently did not have the same
choices in their lives and demonstrated the least engagement
with ‘managing’ an appropriate online identity. Some working
class participants expressed a resistance to such normative
self-monitoring instead adopting a defiant ‘in your face’
determination to engage in intoxication and identity displays
with little regard for consequences. Others, particularly those
on government benefits, ensured they did not display their
drinking practices online due to potential governmental
surveillance of their leisure-time activities.
5) Gain insight into the extent of young adults’ use of
new technologies to produce their own version of
‘everyday celebrity’ and how this relates to their
drinking practices and cultures.
Popular culture is saturated with hedonistic displays of
drunken excess especially within online entertainment news,
regular news, tabloid newspapers and magazines. This
celebrity focus was significant in young adults’ everyday lives
for their identities and negotiated processes of producing
social distinction. In this research we found that celebrity
culture provided a field of resources through which young
people explore and adopt values, tastes, and desirable
and undesirable identities within the culture of intoxication,
although not in straightforward ways. Drinking heavily was
seen as a reasonable practice for some female celebrities
(notably those who were young adults), while it was seen
as natural and expected in most male celebrities. Many of
our participants used social media to ‘follow’ and connect
to celebrities in a way that assisted in crafting their online
identity (particularly Ma¯ ori and Pasifika participants) and
served to demonstrate what it is to be a young adult in
contemporary society. Such interests and actions allowed
and reinforced the (social) importance for young people of
engaging in their own everyday practices of ‘celebritising’
themselves, practices that were primarily achieved through
social networking.
6) Develop new theoretical understandings of the
processes of identity construction and negotiation
through drinking cultures and new media
technologies.
From the outset the research took an innovative stance
on young people’s alcohol consumption by moving away
from a focus on drinking behaviours (e.g. unit based
assessments of young people’s drinking) towards a focus
on their local drinking cultures. Some previous theorizing
has challenged the construction of young people’s drinking
as an individualized process (e.g. Griffin et al., 2009; Lyons
& Willott, 2008). Young people’s drinking cultures are seen
as embedded in a wider societal context, the intoxigenic
environment, which is saturated with alcohol marketing and
the tensions inherent in neo-liberalism: urging people on the
one hand to consume and to celebrate, while on the other
demanding they be responsible and controlled. Our theorising
has focused on these tensions and how they differentially
affect young people’s local drinking cultures in relation to
ethnicity, gender and class. This research demonstrates the
importance of cultural specificities of local drinking contexts
within Aotearoa/NZ, and these in turn can be set within the
context of the globalizing of youth consumption practices
(Babor et al, 2010, Gordon, Heim & MacAskill, 2012).
As noted previously, the commercial nature of new media
technologies play a central role in young adults’ drinking
cultures. A key finding from the research is new insight into
the ways in which alcohol companies are using social media
to market their products to young people, and how young
adults are engaging with this marketing. Our findings showed
that participants did not view Facebook as a commercial
platform despite the fact that its business model relies on
analysis of ‘big data’ from users, employing sophisticated
algorithms to produce consumer information for sale to third
parties. Facebook appeared to be considered independent
even of the Internet, with some participants commenting that
they don’t go online but do go on Facebook.
Multi-national alcohol corporations have been well ahead of
the curve in employing social media, particularly Facebook
and other SNS for marketing purposes. Participants’
Facebook profiles and activities demonstrated clearly that
alcohol marketing initiatives within the online environment are
effective. Elements of campaigns are actively appropriated by
young people and employed within their profiles, to present
tastes and preferences, facilitate social interaction, construct
identities, and more generally develop cultural capital. The
combination of online alcohol marketing with user-generated
content and activity means that engagement with SNS
reinforces the idea that drinking is about fun, pleasure and
socializing. Alcohol brands become an integral part of young
people’s everyday lifestyles, reinforcing the widespread
culture of intoxication.
Some participants expressed the view that only ‘sidebar’
advertisements on Facebook were marketing, and alcohol
product pages (such as Tui, 42 Below Vodka, or Jim Beam)
and their promotions (such as specials, competitions and
giveaways), while commercial in origin, were not considered
as explicit marketing as they were shared through postings
to friend networks. While the participants in the research
were reasonably well educated and saw themselves as
media savvy, many did not see themselves as direct targets
of online alcohol marketing (despite engaging with alcohol
brand sites and friending them on Facebook). This is
understandable as such commercial content and activity
mimics friend relationships on Facebook, appearing in
10 ReseaRch RepoRt
March 2014
participants’ group links, Newsfeeds and status updates in
the same manner that friends’ postings do. It also is shared
through friend networks, and therefore it becomes very
difficult to distinguish what is marketing and what is not.
Alcohol companies recognise this and increasingly employ
social media (and devote increasingly large percentages
of their budgets) for digital marketing to young people.
Participants also showed very little awareness of the amount
of personal information they gave away with every ‘like’
or interaction with an alcohol page on Facebook. These
personal data are used by drinks companies to engage
in more sophisticated and personally targeted campaigns
that appear to turn on a diverse range of what we have
come to think of as ‘marketing moments’. Our individual
interviews demonstrated multiple examples of points at
which the participant actively recognises a product or offer
and expresses an intention to purchase. Furthermore, the
geo-location technology embedded in smartphones allows
marketers to tailor their messaging according to the users’
proximity to their products. Participants, while recognising
such content as commercial in origin, again did not see this
as an explicit ‘marketing’ process, but rather as an extremely
useful service they received while out drinking within an
urban setting (especially when notifications were from bars or
clubs giving ‘information’ about free entry or cheap drinks).
These kinds of marketing approaches were not unique to
Facebook. Our stage 3 data highlighted how websites and
phone apps promote drinking as well as reinforcing and
normalising a culture of intoxication. For example, Drinkify
is a website which matches a person’s musical tastes to
particular drinks. A smartphone cover has been designed
to double as a bottle opener, which also has a free app
that counts the number of bottles opened using the opener
and allows the user to post this information as updates to
their Facebook account. Other phone apps allow users to
check the price and alcohol content of drinks on offer, and
then select the
drink that will get
them drunkest for
the least amount
of money in the
quickest time. All
of this new media
material contributes
to a culture that
reinforces alcohol
consumption,
and particularly
excessive
consumption,
among young
adults, not just
in terms of their
behaviours and
drinking practices,
but also within their
everyday processes
of identity
negotiations and
constructions.
7) Extend current theoretical frameworks on subjectivity
and self-creation and their centrality to the dominant
neoliberal culture where fame and attention are
significantly valued.
The research demonstrates how crucially important being
visible online was for our participants, whatever form this
took. There are parallels in this respect between the creation
of online branded selves and the broader endorsement of
a culture of celebrity that permeates contemporary media
and society. Most of the participants spent large amounts
of time and effort engaging in Facebook activities, having
it on at least in the background 24 hours a day, receiving
notifications whenever they were mentioned or tagged in
a photo, repeatedly posting personal photos, commenting
regularly and posting status updates. In this way they spent
very large amounts of time crafting their online identities
and publicly displaying their social activities, drinking
practices, and social connections. In contemporary youth
culture, it seems that one of the greatest risks is to become
‘invisible’, that is, to sink below a valued level of popularity
or micro-celebrity or worst, not be seen at all. Visibility
online is therefore highly valued for the capital it builds, yet it
simultaneously exposes young people to surveillance, moral
judgment and commercial marketing by unseen audiences.
Displaying drinking practices within a culture of intoxication
was also an important feature of identity creation (and
negotiation) on Facebook for the young adult participants.
This also made drinking cultures far more ‘visible’, but in
celebrating their drinking practices online young people also
exposed their activities to broader audiences. Participants’
ethnicity structured the ways in which these issues played
out, with Ma¯ ori and Pasifika participants describing
themselves as being much more wary of what is posted
online and more aware of who may view it (e.g. wha¯ nau
[family], employers, future employers, other people in society)
than Pa¯ keha¯ participants. Differences across social class
were also apparent here, with young people on government
benefits being sensitive to potential surveillance, taking care
not to post materials that could be interpreted as spending
money on alcohol. Thus, online displays of excess functioned
to provide pleasure and reinforce friendships and group
bonds, but played out differently for participants depending
upon their position within the social structure, thereby
complicating the notion that SNS are an autonomous place of
self-expression. Indeed, they seem to (re)introduce a range of
different power dynamics that young people must continually
and actively negotiate.
The insights and intricacies of identity negotiation and
(re)creation within the current neoliberal climate are not
straightforward and require different forms of work depending
on people’s position within society. Applied to drinking
cultures these notions present multiple challenges to the
pursuit of a “paradigm shift” around alcohol use in Aotearoa/
NZ (New Zealand Law Commission, 2010) and minimizing
alcohol-related harm for young people.
Flaunting it on Facebook:
Young adults, drinking cultures and the cult of celebritY 11
conclusions and Future research
It is clear from the research that aside from concerns over
alcohol and health, SNS are a highly significant development
within specific cultural groupings with major influences
on identity, relationships, culture and practices. For Ma¯ ori
and Pasifika in particular, the opportunities and threats
are particularly acute and can assist in explaining tensions
between generations over cultural issues and practices.
There is a major role for research in contributing to media
strategies for knowledge transmission and translation for
diasporic communities, enhancing cultural identities and
debating development and advancement in language, arts,
sciences, economics and self-determination. Future research
in this area also needs to focus on securing protections
against the threats of commercialisation and developing
programmes and practices to optimise the potentials of new
media.
The findings from this research also demonstrate clear
gendered issues relating to drinking practices, drinking
cultures, use of SNS, Facebook work, identity negotiation
processes, and the celebritisation of the self. There are a
number of avenues these issues raise for future research,
some of which will be followed through using the present
dataset and subsequent publications. Specifically these
include 1) the gendered nature of ‘photo-work’ with females
almost exclusively having the role of photographer (despite
traditional links between technology and masculinity), 2) the
role of emotions in drinking and how these are significant
in young women’s drinking cultures, 3) ‘extreme drinking’
and gendered discourses such as ‘tragic girls’ which are
apparent online, 4) the role Facebook plays in young people’s
perceptions of gendered drinking practices cultures through
online posting of photos and discussions of drinking events.
Beyond this, the research suggests that discourses of
celebrity are used in gendered and classed ways by young
adults to produce processes of social distinction and identity
construction, and this would be a valuable avenue for future
research to pursue.
This research highlights that social networking systems
and related technologies are being widely used by both
young people and commercial interests within drinking
practices and drinking cultures in Aotearoa/NZ. Venturing
into these almost uncharted domains we have encountered
a number of interrelated issues, including the ways in which
‘neo-liberalism’ impacts on people’s everyday lives, how
it is negotiated, reproduced and transformed; the ways
in which new media technologies are embedded in the
routines of young people’s lives; how these technologies
enable individuals to ‘celebritise the self’ by disseminating
information on the Internet about their experiences, often
about their drinking practices; and finally, the leading
(but often hidden or disguised) role that commercial
vested interest plays in all these areas. The research has
explored young adults’ negotiation of identities within these
contexts, and within neoliberal discourses of individualism,
consumerism and celebrity in contemporary society.
The increasingly close ties between SNS, consumption, and
identity have become a key analytical focus for our project.
Young people appear particularly attuned to the opportunities
social networks sites offer for publicising their tastes and
interests through engagement with heavily branded forms
of consumption and marketing online. This clearly enables
them to ‘narrate’ their own sense of identity, and branded
consumption also obviously facilitates various forms of social
interaction they value highly. There are also clear links here
to the broader ‘culture of celebrity’ that dominates society
more generally and which deserves much closer scrutiny.
Commercialised life online also raises a number of critical
issues around the increasingly dominant role of private
corporations in social life, particularly when it is related to
alcohol consumption. We are interested in pursuing these
aspects of our project much further.
A key direction for future research will be exploring the
beginnings made here and in the international research
setting around alcohol marketing in SNS and related new
media. The research literature is clear on the causal links
between marketing and consumption with young people in
particular (Anderson, de Bruijn, Angus, Gordon, & Hastings
et al., 2009; Babor et al., 2010). Our study demonstrates
how Facebook offers multiple ‘marketing moments’ to our
participants, specific examples of which are recorded in
our databases. However this is very early days in terms of
understanding such potential new threats to public health.
Future research could beneficially interrogate all aspects of
presence and prevalence of online marketing of alcohol, and
adopt multiple lines of inquiry with a particular emphasis on
informing policy responses for prevention/mitigation and
harm reduction approaches, particularly those pitched in the
new media environment.
12 ReseaRch RepoRt
March 2014
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14 ReseaRch RepoRt
March 2014
appendiX: research outputs
This research is continuing to generate a range of outputs,
some led by the PhD students, some by Masters students,
and some by the named investigators. These include outputs
on the nature and use of social networking technologies,
the drinking culture within Aotearoa/NZ, drinking practices,
marketing, and also the intersection of many of these areas.
Below we provide a list of publications, including peer-
reviewed journal articles and theses. Members of the team
have also given presentations about this research at local and
international conferences. For a full list of presentations, and
links to publications, please see our website:
www.drinkingcultures.info.
Journal articles and book chapters
Goodwin, I., Lyons, A., Griffin, C. & McCreanor, T. (2014).
Ending up online: Interrogating mediated youth drinking
cultures. In B. Roberts and A. Bennett (Eds), Mediated Youth
Cultures. Palgrave Macmillan.
McCreanor, T., Lyons A.C., Goodwin, I., Moewaka-Barnes, H.,
Griffin, C. & Hutton, F. (2013). Youth drinking cultures, social
networking and alcohol marketing: Implications for public
health. Critical Public Health, 23, 1, 110-120.
Niland, P. Lyons A.C, Goodwin I & Hutton F. (In press). “See
it doesn’t look pretty does it?”: Young adults’ airbrushed
drinking practices on Facebook. Psychology and Health.
Niland, P. Lyons A.C., Goodwin I & Hutton F. (In press).
Friendship work on Facebook: Young adults’ understandings
and practices of friendship. Journal of Community and
Applied Social Psychology (accepted subject to minor
revisions).
Niland, P., Lyons A.C., Goodwin I. & Hutton F. (2013).
“Everyone can loosen up and get a bit of a buzz on”: Young
adults, alcohol and friendship practices. International Journal
of Drug Policy, 24(6), 530-537.
O’Carroll, A. D. (2013) Kanohi ki te kanohi – a thing of
the past? Examining the notion of ‘virtual’ ahika and the
implications for kanohi ki te kanohi. Pimatisiwin: A Journal of
Aboriginal and Indigenous Community Health, 11(3), 441-455.
O’Carroll, A. D. (2013). An analysis of how Rangatahi Ma¯ ori
use social networking sites. MAI Journal, 2(1), 46-59.
O’Carroll, A. D. (2013). Ma¯ ori identity construction in social
networking sites. International Journal of Critical Indigenous
Studies, 6(2), 2-16.
O’Carroll, A. D. (2013). Virtual whanaungatanga. Ma¯ ori
utilising social networking sites to attain and maintain
relationships. AlterNative: An International Journal of
Indigenous Peoples, 9(3), 230-245.
Theses
Hebden, R. (2011). Tertiary student drinking culture, facebook
and alcohol advertising: Collapsing boundaries between
social life and commericalised consumption. Unpublished
Master of Arts thesis, Massey University, Wellington, New
Zealand. http://mro.massey.ac.nz/handle/10179/3043
Niland, P. (2013). Young adults’ friendships: Over a network,
over a drink. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Massey
University, Wellington.
O’Carroll, A. D. (2013). Kanohi ki te kanohi: a thing of the
past? An examination of Ma¯ ori use of social networking
sites and the implications for Ma¯ ori culture and society.
Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Massey University,
Auckland, New Zealand.
Pedersen, M. (2010). Celebrities, new media and young
women’s drinking cultures. Unpublished Honours
dissertation, Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand.
Tonks, A. (2012). Photos on Facebook: An exploratory study
of their role in the social lives and drinking experiences of
New Zealand university students. Unpublished Master of
Science thesis, Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand.
http://mro.massey.ac.nz/handle/10179/4177
Forthcoming
Hebden, R., Lyons, A.C., Goodwin, I. & McCreanor, T. “When
you add alcohol it gets that much better”: Tertiary students,
alcohol consumption and online drinking cultures. Submitted
manuscript.
Lyons, A.C., Goodwin, I., McCreanor, T. & Griffin, C. Social
networking and young adults’ drinking practices: Innovative
qualitative methods for health behavior research. Submitted
manuscript.
Lyons, A.C., Griffin, C, Goodwin, I, Pedersen, M., McCreanor,
T. & Moewaka Barnes, H. “Who knows if that’s the alcohol or
the heels?” Celebrity culture and the culture of intoxication. In
progress.
Lyons, A.C., McCreanor, T., Goodwin, I., Griffin, C., Hutton, F.,
Moewaka Barnes, H., O’Carroll, A.D., Samu, L., Niland, P. &
Vroman, K.E. Youth drinking cultures in Aotearoa. Submitted
manuscript.
McCreanor, T., Goodwin, I., Lyons, A., Moewaka Barnes,
H., Griffin, C., Hutton, F. “Drink a twelve box before you
go”: Pre-loading in youth drinking cultures in Aotearoa New
Zealand. In progress.
Moewaka Barnes, H., McCreanor, T., Goodwin, I., Lyons,
A., Griffin, C., Hutton, F. “So drunk right now! Anybody
wanna join?”: Intoxigenic environments go online. In
progress.
Samu, L., Moewaka Barnes, H., Asiasiga, L., McCreanor,
T. Like for Pacific Islanders, our culture is our religion. In
progress.
Tonks, A., Lyons, A.C. & Goodwin, I. Researching online
visual displays on social networking sites: Methodologies and
meanings. Submitted manuscript.
Whariki
