A range of negative health outcomes are associated with young adults' drinking practices. One key arena where images of, and interaction about, drinking practices occurs is social networking sites, particularly Facebook. This study investigated the ways in which young adults' talked about and understood their uses of Facebook within their drinking practices. Face-to-face, semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven New Zealand young adults as they displayed, navigated and talked about their Facebook pages and drinking behaviours. Our social constructionist thematic analysis identified three major themes, namely 'friendship group belonging', 'balanced self-display' and 'absences in positive photos'. Drinking photos reinforced friendship group relationships but time and effort was required to limit drunken photo displays to maintain an overall attractive online identity. Positive photos prompted discussion of negative drinking events which were not explicitly represented. Together these understandings of drinking photos function to delimit socially appropriate online drinking displays, effectively 'airbrushing' these visual depictions of young adults' drinking as always pleasurable and without negative consequences. We consider the implications of these findings for ways alcohol health initiatives may intervene to reframe 'airbrushed' drinking representations on Facebook and provoke a deeper awareness among young people of drinking practices and their online displays.

New Zealand, similar to many other westernised nations, has a well-developed national culture of drinking to intoxication. Within this cultural context, young women are exhorted to engage with the night time economy, get drunk and have “fun” without relinquishing claims to “respectability”. More recently, the rise of Facebook and other social networking sites has coincided with shifts in postfeminism, neo-liberalism and the development of the night time economy. Social networking sites have become a mundane part of people’s everyday lives, whilst still reflecting structural constraints such as class, ethnicity and gender. This article reports on a qualitative study of young women’s drinking practices and uses of Facebook. Focus group discussions were conducted with eight friendship groups involving 36 participants aged 18–25 years. Transcripts of these discussions were subjected to thematic analysis. Three key themes were identified: “tragic girls” and “crack whores”; “drunken femininities”; and “Facebook, alcohol and drunken femininities”. The results indicated that young women experienced significant tensions in expressing their “drunken femininities” both in public and online, whilst also engaging in “airbrushing” of Facebook photos to minimize the appearance of intoxication for known and unknown audiences.

Alcohol consumption and heavy drinking in young adults have been key concerns for public health. Alcohol marketing is an important factor in contributing to negative outcomes. The rapid growth in the use of new social networking technologies raises new issues regarding alcohol marketing, as well as potential impacts on alcohol cultures more generally. Young people, for example, routinely tell and re-tell drinking stories online, share images depicting drinking, and are exposed to often intensive and novel forms of alcohol marketing. In this paper, we critically review the research literature on (a) social networking technologies and alcohol marketing and (b) online alcohol content on social networks, and then consider implications for public health knowledge and research. We conclude that social networking systems are positive and pleasurable for young people, but are likely to contribute to pro-alcohol environments and encourage drinking. However, currently research is preliminary and descriptive, and we need innovative methods and detailed in-depth studies to gain greater understanding of young people's mediated drinking cultures and commercial alcohol promotion.

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Much attention has been paid in the last decade to the “cultures of intoxication” of modern Western societies such as Britain, Australia, and New Zealand. This has manifested in an intense focus on the amount of alcohol that young people in particular consume per session and their resultant practices. This article explores young women's drinking cultures and focuses instead on their social motivations for socializing in specific places as well as their emotional connections to these particular spaces. The role of alcohol is reflected on within these motivations and connections in relation to the way it engenders particular practices. Places of risk (as well as pleasure) are identified and considered in terms of harm-reduction interventions. Young women's drinking practices are also positioned within a neoliberal social context, producing tensions in their engagement with, and negotiation of, cultures of intoxication. Harm-reduction initiatives need to speak to these tensions and to avoid producing campaigns based on conservative ideals of femininity and respectability.

This article examines drug dealing as a business activity, contrasting the experiences of two male drug dealers and a female drug dealer and examining the unique roles that are assigned to both male and female dealers. The issues associated with these roles include risk, masculinity and criminality, visibility, violence and intimidation, networks and trust. What will be focussed upon in this article will be the themes of hegemonic masculinity, risk, and visibility. The contrasting experiences of male and female drug dealers demonstrated in this study show that this type of criminality is indeed affected by the gendered position of the different dealers. To negotiate masculinity in the world of drug dealing, for female dealers in particular, is argued to be problematic as this type of criminal activity is negotiated around 'hegemonic masculinity'. Issues of risk are also examined and how these are affected by the gender of the dealer in question, as is visibility and how these things are negotiated by the female dealer to protect herself from the hegemonic masculine world she moves through.

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Māori and Pacific Peoples experience a disproportionate burden of alcoholrelated harm relative to other ethnic groups, yet little is known about the context in which this drinking occurs. Few studies have explored how and why young Māori and Pacific women drink. Therefore, this article aims to develop a more nuanced and detailed account of Māori and Pacific young women's drinking practices. The following article reports on an ethnographic study of young Māori and Pacific women aged 18-30. Five Māori participants and six Pacific participants were selected and asked to become researchers within their social groups. Nine female researchers also became participants in the study, accompanying recruited participants to drinking occasions and events. Participants were each given a 'drinking diary' to document drinking occasions, which formed the data-set for the project. Three levels of thematic analysis were undertaken. The first noted broad themes with the second and third levels exploring more nuanced themes and identifying intersections across themes. The study demonstrated that Māori and Pacific young women's engagement with New Zealand's culture of intoxication is complex: Māori and Pacific women drink for pleasure or to achieve a 'buzz' and to be social. Drinking practices are deeply affected by ethnic and peer group collectives ('the girls'), traditions and expectations. Harm reduction initiatives need to take account of the many pathways specific to how Māori and Pacific young women engage with alcohol use. Additionally, the wider context in which alcohol-related harm occurs needs to be considered in policy and harm reduction debates.