Drink wisely Australians, but keep drinking: does the alcohol industry in Australia frame the discourse on alcohol to maintain hegemony?

Abstract

Public health literature proposes that the Australian alcohol industry-funded organisation DrinkWise is a Social Aspects Public Relations Organisation (SAPRO) that favours industry over public interests by deploying ineffective alcohol harm reduction strategies. This research addresses a gap in the critical public relations literature by investigating these claims through an examination of DrinkWise\u27s source media content. Content and rhetorical framing analysis revealed how the organisation framed the alcohol issue, as well as identifying the messages and message audiences of their media releases. Results supported extant research suggesting that DrinkWise is insulating the alcohol industry against evidence-based public health harm reduction strategies, by engaging in agenda building through industry-friendly framing of the alcohol issue, and dissemination of information subsidies to elites and policy-makers. We discuss the conclusions through a lens of hegemony and develop an argument that DrinkWise media relations is a strategy to maintain a hegemonic individual responsibility ideology

A New Development in Front Group Strategy: The Social Aspects Public Relations Organization (SAPRO)

“…DrinkWise expressed a judgement that drinking was learned from parents and offered its organization as a solution for developing a better drinking culture via the education of parents. Pietracatella and Brady (2016) also found that the DrinkWise media relations discourse promoted targeted solutions by the separation of the population into responsible and irresponsible drinkers. Newspaper reports considered DrinkWise to be a legitimate contributor to the debate; however, criticisms by health researchers appear not to have destabilized the DrinkWise frame or the organization (Carah and van Horen, 2011).…”

“…Individual choice is the most frequently invoked determinant of risk by SAPROs that ignore the influence of global marketing. In the case of DrinkWise, individual choice extends to family choice, that parents choose the behaviors that will determine their children's drinking (Pietracatella and Brady, 2016). Rather than the state providing social protection, under the economic values of neoliberalism, social protection is a commodity that can be bought and sold on the market and it is the market that is better at providing protection.…”

“…Two extant studies on alcohol SAPROs (Carah and van Horen, 2011;Pietracatella and Brady, 2016) used DrinkWise media releases as data to analyse the media relations activities of DrinkWise as a form of indirect lobbying. Carah and van Horen (2011) also analyzed the newspaper stories generated by the media releases.…”

“…Both studies showed that DrinkWise frames issues to create a favorable agenda for the alcohol industry. Pietracatella and Brady (2016) found that the general practice of DrinkWise media relations was intended to disseminate politically motivated messages to elite individuals and policy makers due to 60% of the messages identified in the media release sample being directed to this stakeholder group (58). This occurred despite parents being the said targets of the ongoing social marketing campaign that was conducted during the timeframe of the media release sample.…”

“…Despite claims that they operate in the public interest and remain independent of their funders, alcohol SAPROs have been found to advocate for their funding industries (Carah and van Horen, 2011;Pietracatella and Brady, 2016;Miller et al, 2018). The type of pro-consumption lobbying in which SAPROs invest has also been found to block actual harm reduction (Miller et al, 2018).…”