UEL Psychology Seminar Series
Date: 24th June 2015
Time: From 17:00
Venue: Arthur Edwards Building, Room 2.06
Flaunting it on Facebook: Young adults and drinking cultures in Aotearoa New Zealand
Professor Antonia Lyons
Professor of Psychology, School of Psychology, Massey University, Wellington New Zealand
Young adults regularly engage in heavy drinking episodes with groups of friends. They are also high users of social networking technologies such as Facebook, and are said to be obsessed with identity, image and celebrity. In this talk I provide an overview of research that explored how new technologies are being used by young people in their drinking practices and cultures. In total 141 participants (aged 18-25) took part in 34 friendship focus group discussions (12 Pākehā, 12 Māori and 10 Pasifika groups), while 23 young adults took part in individual interviews where they showed and discussed their Facebook pages. Popular online material regarding alcohol consumption was also collected. Critical, in-depth qualitative analyses across the multimodal datasets demonstrated major convergences across ethnic groups in terms of the centrality of alcohol to social life, and Facebook was central before, during and following drinking episodes. However, the meanings, risks and pleasures of these practices varied by ethnicity, gender and class. Being visible online was important and young adults ‘celebritised the self’ by routinely posting on Facebook. Digital marketing was commonplace and sophisticated in this context, and was drawn on enthusiastically and often uncritically by young adults to develop social relationships and cultural capital. The findings are considered in terms of their implications for theorizing contemporary drinking cultures and the current ‘culture of intoxication’, as well as alcohol policies and health promotion strategies.
Brief Biography:
Antonia’s research interests are around gender, health and identity, particularly the social contexts (and media representations) of behaviours related to health and illness and their implications for individual subjectivities and embodied experiences. She has published over 70 journal articles and is a co-editor of the recent text Qualitative Research in Clinical and Health Psychology (Palgrave; 2015) with Dr Poul Rohleder. Her co-authored textbook (Health Psychology: A Critical Introduction) with Professor Kerry Chamberlain was published in 2006 by Cambridge University Press. Antonia is currently a co-editor for Qualitative Research in Psychology, an Associate Editor for Health Psychology Review, is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Health Psychology and Psychology and Health, and is a co-editor of the book series Critical Approaches to Health (Routledge).
Antonia’s research interests are around gender, health and identity, particularly the social contexts (and media representations) of behaviours related to health and illness and their implications for individual subjectivities and embodied experiences. She has published over 70 journal articles and is a co-editor of the recent text Qualitative Research in Clinical and Health Psychology (Palgrave; 2015) with Dr Poul Rohleder. Her co-authored textbook (Health Psychology: A Critical Introduction) with Professor Kerry Chamberlain was published in 2006 by Cambridge University Press. Antonia is currently a co-editor for Qualitative Research in Psychology, an Associate Editor for Health Psychology Review, is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Health Psychology and Psychology and Health, and is a co-editor of the book series Critical Approaches to Health (Routledge).
Session Chair: Dr Poul Rohleder
The talk will be followed by a book launch of Qualitative Research Methods in Psychology, edited by Dr Poul Rohleder and Prof Antonia Lyons.
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