Every time we start thinking we're the center of the universe, the universe turns around and says with a slightly distracted air, "I'm sorry. What'd you say your name was again?" Margret Maron
A comparative examination of international alcohol advertising
research
The previous chapter examines the dominant approaches in alcohol advertising research in Aotearoa/New Zealand. The critique offered was that the work was theoretically and methodologically problematic; and I argued for approaches that are more consistent with contemporary theories. However, as I identified at the beginning of the chapter, alcohol-advertising research in this country represents a small pool of research, from a small group of researchers. Carabine (2001) suggests that where any analysis is based on very limited talk or texts, that one should locate the work that has been done alongside other similar accounts. I decided it would be useful, and indeed necessary, to ask how my local critique ‘fits’ with what international researchers have to say about such issues. This next chapter therefore re-locates my local review within a broader, international academic context.
The review process
To locate my local review of the research in a more global context I decided to undertake a review of international publications addressing alcohol-advertising impacts. The objective was to compare what I had identified locally with what was being identified or identifiable in the field more widely. The way I established a timeframe within which to conduct the review was to focus on publications that had been produced in the last 15 years (1989-2004). Materials for the review were obtained through scanning peer reviewed journals, following up article
references and citations, using libraries, obtaining alcohol research centre publications, and searching the internet for online resources. This search produced a significant body of material. After reviewing this material I developed a summary of the main issues I identified as raised through the international research. The issues I identified were then used to structure the summary of the international review in this chapter in the form of key themes. The themes identified are: epistemological differences; shifts in research approaches; relocating ads and experiences of those within social contexts; attention to the youth effect; concerns with critical absences, pleasures, and reflexivity; and comments on conditions of debate, public opinions, and wining in increments.
Epistemological differences
As with the Aotearoa/New Zealand research, organising epistemologies in international studies broadly fall into positivist-empirical or culturalist- interpretative paradigms. Theoretical developments – particularly within feminisms, post-structuralisms, and social-constructionist projects in media studies – have had important impacts on advertising research (Kellner, 1997; McQuail, 1994). However, in the area of applied alcohol advertising research within the health sector, many studies remain structured by the traditional approaches of positivism (Moore, 2002). These positivist studies have been increasingly challenged, with main critiques coming from two directions. First, paradigmatic critiques have been raised through culturalist approaches (Moore, 2002); and second, other positivist critiques have focused on problems of accuracy, design, and results within existing research (Atkin, 1995; Grube, 1993; Saffer, 1998).
Primary attention within paradigmatic critiques has been to positivist constructions of the subject – as an agentic, rational, separate individual who can logically conduct and regulate her or his own life to best effect (Törrönen, 2000). Tensions have been highlighted around the ways in which positivist logic of the subject undermines calls for restriction of alcohol promotion (Fisher, 1993; Sulkunen & Warpenius, 2000; Tigerstedt, 1999; Törrönen, 2000). Presently any
idea of ‘misuse’ of alcohol works through the possibility of rational, acceptable use (Moore, 2002). Abuse is therefore locatable as an individual issue, as opposed to being engendered through socially re-produced conditions, responses, or relationships. This organising principle of individual culpability is importantly entwined in the logics and institutions of contemporary capitalist consumerism – especially freedoms of choice and voice (Moore, 2002; Mundy, 1995). These individualising arguments combine to suggest that the ultimate control for alcohol use exists within the ‘normal’ person, not an advertisement. Therefore, any restriction of advertising represents unnecessary restriction for ‘normal’ consumers. This works to undermine any right to intervene in advertising activities, or to attempt to constrain them.
Prevailing logics within positivist frameworks also require that any concerns with advertising ‘effects’ must frame the subjects of that concern as those who are not normal – that is as ‘at-risk’ groups who do not (or might not) respond safely to alcohol promotion. Consistently identified in research as ‘at risk’ are: children, youth, women, minority groups (defined ethnically or sexually) and alcoholics (or problem drinkers) (Beccaria, 2001; Fisher, 1993; Tigerstedt, 1999; Törrönen, 2000). Problems surrounding such constructions of normal and abnormal subject/s that have been raised in critiques are, that, as well as well being politically questionable, such categories naturalise the dominance of individualising frameworks that structure much of the research, and that these reproduce the idea of a white, Western, heterosexual, male as a ‘normal’ subject (Beccaria, 2001; Tigerstedt, 1999; Törrönen, 2000). Questions surround the validity of defining ‘normal’ as an adult heterosexual male subject, particularly when adult heterosexual male drinking groups are a primary source of problematic alcohol consumption styles and associated negative behaviours (Schulenberg & Maggs, 2002; West, 2001).
Epistemological differences have also been identified between public health and advertising industries (Bush & Bush, 1994). In public health, one policy maker suggested that it would “be helpful to know how advanced techniques used in
alcohol advertising capture adolescents and children within a broad web of exposure that is beyond current regulation and public monitoring” (McKenzie, 2000, p.9). However, it may not be advanced techniques that are the problem for monitoring, so much as it is differences between what is being assessed, and the lenses or tools of assessment being used to monitor advertisements (Bush & Bush, 1994). Although dominant marketing epistemologies are positivist and rely on the logic of a rational subject, in their applied domains advertising agencies research products by examining how they connect to and resonate with meanings for consumers (e.g. Dretzin, 2001). What this means is that advertising agencies, as Dretzin makes clear, are working with a social-relational construction of the consumer as subject. In doing so, they are engaged in more culturalist-interpretative frameworks. This epistemological difference represents an interesting reversal of the paradigmatic divisions between theory and research in media studies. As yet, the culturalist-interpretative shift that has occurred in advertising’s applied sector is not really reflected in mainstream marketing theories. This division means that in terms of what advertisers are doing, or the techniques they are using, techniques are not so much ‘advanced’ as they are epistemologically different from what remains dominant in applied media research in the alcohol health sector.
Shifts in research approaches
Historically, alcohol advertising research was largely quantitative and depended on experimental studies of short-term behaviours in artificial settings (e.g. Bandura, 1973). Recognition of the limits of early studies produced a response of more naturalised research and a turn to survey and interview based ‘qualitative’ methodologies (Fisher, 1993) These methodological shifts did not mark an epistemological difference. The methods of research had changed but the goals had not. The primary goal remained one of meaningfully and accurately identifying and measuring specific impacts of alcohol advertising. In relation to this aim, the newer research approaches were still identified as having problems of accuracy and inability to offer causation (Atkin, 1995; Unger, Schuster, Zogg,
Dent, & Stacy, 2003) and, despite the development of increasingly complex research models (Grube & Wallack, 1994), evidential support for alcohol advertising impacts remained elusive.
Thus a major issue that became identified in the field was the research goal itself: to identify direct effects. Effects-based research was challenged as being overly simplistic and methodologically unsound, and researchers who were otherwise epistemologically divided shared the view that there were better ways to address the processes involved (cf., Bobo & Husten, 2000; Grube, 1993; Parker, 1998; Saffer, 1996a, 1996b; Unger et al., 2003). Ideas of establishing a direct relationship between alcohol use and advertising were challenged as impossible because advertising represented only part of a complex range of interrelated forces that could contribute to the understandings of, responses to, and uses of alcohol (Atkin, 1995).
In a move away from attempts to determine direct relationships, researchers sought to broaden understanding of what constitutes the promotion of alcohol. They began looking at relationships that combinations of different forms of alcohol promotion (including mainstream alcohol advertising) might have with the ways in which people approach and participate in drinking (Bobo & Husten, 2000; McKenzie, 2000; Saffer, 1998; Unger et al., 2003). Increasing recognition was also given to the complexity of media engagements, stimulating the development of alternative models (e.g. Domzal & Kernan, 1992). In these alternative models, advertisements were made sense of as socially-located texts, to which audiences – as socio-culturally located beings – might bring particular experiences that would importantly inflect their interpretations (Alcoholism & Drug Abuse Weekly, 1996; Bush & Bush, 1994; Friedmann & Zimmer, 1988; Parker, 1998). Research started to examine how people’s stories about alcohol generally connected to, or resonated with, their advertising interpretations. The suggestion was that advertisements may be understood to be potentially, but not inevitably, participating at some level in resourcing ways in which people understand themselves and their worlds (Friedmann & Zimmer, 1988).
Such changes in research attention highlighted the importance of focusing on the different meanings alcohol holds for people (Heath, 1995; Room & Sato, 2002). A call for attention to the role of meanings in alcohol research was not new (e.g. Friedmann & Zimmer, 1988), but having alternative frameworks within which to explore meanings was. Epistemological and theoretical shifts in media studies opened up alternative research strategies – and potentially new monitoring frameworks (e.g., Bush & Bush, 1994). Studies around meanings examined relationships between advertising and the multiple and ongoing processes through which people construct and negotiate identities and actions (Bang & Hill, 1998; Smith, Atkin, & Fediuk, 2000). A later focus has been on how types of alcohol, and forms of use, play roles in the articulation of particular identities within communities, and to the relationship those identificatory forms have to what is on offer in advertisements (McKenzie, 2000; West, 2001). Work has become particularly active around the interrelationship of alcohol and its representations with being adult, being gendered (Gough & Edwards, 1998; McKenzie, 2000; West, 2001), and being identified with groups (particularly ethnic and peer groups) (Alaniz, 1998; Mintz, 1984).
(Re)locating advertising texts, and engagements with
advertising texts, within social contexts
An additional shift in research has occurred where some researchers have looked beyond the traditional focus on mainstream mediums, an over-emphasis on television having been argued by some as a key reason for ‘effects’ researchers having failed to substantiate their positions. The argument is that focusing on television as if it were the commercial form has led to a failure to identify and set out other important (commercial) promotional forms and to examine their interrelated impacts (Saffer, 1998). Saffer’s (positivist) argument is that examination of television advertising as one strand within a wider promotional web of activities can provide researchers with the numbers needed to make a case for arguments about effects, and thereby offer a substantial challenge to commercial interests.
Artificially abstracting a single aspect of consumers’ wider promotional experiences about alcohol had caused neglect in attention to the diversity of ways in which exposure to the positive promotion of alcohol takes place more broadly within communities. Some researchers moved to examine other key forces that affect how, where, and in what ways people drink, highlighting the importance of interactions between commercial and non-commercial forms of promotion when seeking explanations for sources of ideas about alcohol, drinking spaces, drinking styles, and attached identities (Heath, 1995; Pauly, 1994; West, 2001). Sources of promotion – that is, any forms of advocacy around alcohol use, whether intended or not – have been highlighted through research projects in two areas: 1) family, friends, and communities (Bobo & Husten, 2000; Grube & Wallack, 1994; Montonen, 1997; National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, 1997; White, Bates, & Johnson, 1991); and 2) non-commercial media portrayals, such as those in prime-time programming, children’s films, and music shows or videos (Goldstein, Sobel, & Newman, 1999; Grube, 1993; McKenzie, 2000; Office of National Drug Control Policy, 2002). These researchers relocated advertising within broader social processes of reproduction – as opposed to origination – of meanings about alcohol. That they did so made the abstractions of traditional research problematic and considerably widened how far one might cast any net of representational responsibility (Montonen, 1997). Locating positive promotion of alcohol in broader socio-cultural contexts raised important questions around all social representations and enactments of alcohol use.
Attention to contexts and locations has also identified the need to attend to relationships between the particular social and material conditions of communities, and issues around promotion and consumption of alcohol (Alaniz, 2000; Beccaria, 2001). Alaniz highlights the complex interrelationships of unemployment, poverty, lack of leisure alternatives, and targeting by alcohol companies (through combinations of media, promotional activities, and outlets). This relocation of promotion within wider social analyses of conditions highlights
the critical nature of examining the lived contexts within which the experience of alcohol promotion and alcohol use takes place.
Related to locations and contexts is the small but vital developing area of research, that is, examining the ways in which particular forms of Western advertising are targeted to, and experienced within, non-Western communities (Alaniz, 1998, 2000; Alaniz & Wilkes, 1995; Atkin, 1989; Hackbath, Silvestri, & Cosper, 1994). Such studies suggest attention is required to particular ways in which alcohol industries (amongst others) specifically target non-Western communities, materially (e.g. through outlets or particular advertising strategies) and symbolically (through the re-working of traditional cultural forms of meanings) (Alaniz, 1998). Such acts – that is discursive colonising for profit – have only received limited research attention but they are critical issues for researchers to address. Similarly highlighted is the need to examine targeting within groups where the consumption of alcohol has not been a traditional practice (Alaniz & Wilkes, 1995).
Attention to the ‘youth effect’
Attention to the potentially negative effects of alcohol advertising exposure on children and youth has been a key area of attention in international research (Unger et al., 2003). Recent increases in alcohol consumption levels, and in problematic drinking styles (binging) amongst younger people in many communities, have fuelled this focus (Montonen, 1997; Mosher, 1994; Singh, 2003; "A sober look at beer," 1996). Traditionally, as in other effects work, research has often attempted to directly connect problematic youth drinking to ads (McKenzie, 2000; Mintz, 1984; Montonen, 1997; National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, 1997; Smith et al., 2000). More recent studies suggest that there is a need for research into the interrelationships of social forces shaping youth drinking cultures (Moore, 2002; Schulenberg & Maggs, 2002). An important consideration is whether children and youth are engaged in an interpretatively different process to adults (e.g. Lipsitz, Brake, Vincent, & Winters,
1993; Waiters, Treno, & Grube, 2001). Children appear to watch advertisements more attentively than adults, and certain styles of commercial capture young people’s attention more effectively than others (McKenzie, 2000; Waiters et al., 2001). Intended or not, in one study the now infamous Budweiser Frogs commercial apparently had a recall level with the children participating that was only exceeded by Bugs Bunny, beating Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and Kellogg’s Tony the Tiger (Leiber, 1996). A critical issue around interpretative differences relates to whether commercials are connected to the meanings young people are forming about alcohol, rather than working in relation to meanings they have already developed about it (Aitken, 1989; Bang & Hill, 1998). If the meanings ads offer are formatively linked for young people, then the proposition by advertisers that alcohol advertising only affects brand preferences can hold only for existing drinkers and is reopened for critique.
A second question revolves around whether the positive portrayals in advertising texts are appropriate for younger groups of viewers that are argued as inadequately resourced with alternative views or experiences (McKenzie, 2000). However, it is interesting to note that in research examining the particular appeals that alcohol advertising holds for younger viewers what emerged through the talk from the children participating was the clear impact of counter messages on what they had to say. Expressed resistances to the perceived manipulation of alcohol companies were clearly in evidence and the interpretations of the children in the study were complex, layered, and reflected broad discursive influences in debates (Waiters et al., 2001).
Another controversial issue in youth research has been whether reaching children and younger people with positive messages about alcohol and brands is intentional (McKenzie, 2000). Concerns that advertisers deliberately target young people are driven by findings that, despite regulatory codes delimiting youth targeting, researchers have identified ways in which media – such as billboards, specific crossover television programmes (e.g. Beavis and Butthead) and magazines – are running alcohol commercials that achieve extremely high levels
of youth exposure (Alaniz, 2000; Smith et al., 2000). Researchers have raised concerns about the adequacy of present approaches to assess the impacts of such creative productions (Leiber, 1996) and exposure levels to those (Alaniz, 1998) for youth. Gaps in assessment of the range and variety of media exposure young people experience are created through the ongoing overemphasis on television already identified (Saffer, 1998), and gaps in assessments of creative impacts are created through research processes that are not adequately designed, either for the age group or to make sense of the meaning-based responses recent research indicates may be at issue (Bush & Bush, 1994; Duff, 2003). More research is clearly required that can engage with the range and diversity of young people’s experiences in order to make sense of how those young people experience alcohol advertising in ways that may be unique from experiences of adults.
Concern with critical absences: Pleasures and reflexivity
In response to health research concerns about associations to pleasures, regulatory codes have been designed to attempt to legislate connections to pleasures of alcohol use out of alcohol advertising (e.g. McKenzie, 2000). The logic of these regulatory approaches is generated through traditional views that understand advertisers’ positive portrayals as myths or distortions (Bush & Bush, 1994; Kowalski, 2001; Yates, 1999). The idea of advertising ‘myths’ signals the concern that advertisers (and mass media generally) promote a false world view that somehow acts on the subject (Bell, 1996; Parker, 1998). The implication that pleasures are simply the illusory promises of advertising requires critique (e.g. West, 2001; White et al., 1991). Media do not initiate ideas about alcohol use as potentially pleasurable or offering benefits, they draw on existing ideas and performances that people can connect with (Moore, 2002; Parker, 1998). Alcohol can constitute a form of social incentive and reward, and drinking contexts can offer social benefits (West, 2001). Advertising texts offer particular versions of how things are, and like all portrayals these will include gaps, elisions, and absences. If textual interpretations depend on the interactions of people and
texts, then attempting to constrain ideas about alcohol as pleasurable or as providing social benefits seems an unrealistic challenge.
Health research texts are also argued as being constructed through particular positions. These positions are seen as inadequately reflected on at present (Törrönen, 2001). Critiques like Törrönen’s argue that alcohol health researchers, like advertisers, are actively producing knowledge/s, and that they are doing so