The role of alcohol in constructing gender & class identities among young women in the age of social media

Research suggests young women view drinking as a pleasurable aspect of their social lives but that they face challenges in engaging in a traditionally ‘masculine’ behaviour whilst maintaining a desirable ‘femininity’. Social network sites such as Facebook make socialising visible to a wide audience. This paper explores how young people discuss young women’s drinking practices, and how young women construct their identities through alcoho l consumption and its display on social media. We conducted 21 friendship-based focus groups (both mixed and single sex) with young adults aged 18–29 years and 13 individual interviews with a subset of focus group respondents centred on their Facebook practices.

Source: International Journal of Drug Policy - May 4, 2018 Category: Addiction Authors: Jemma Lennox, Carol Emslie, Helen Sweeting, Antonia Lyons Tags: Research Paper Source Type: research