Creating intoxigenic environments: Marketing alcohol to young people in Aotearoa New Zealand

Alcohol consumption among young people in New Zealand is on the rise. Given the broad array of acute and chronic harms that arise from this trend, it is a major cause for alarm and it is imperative that we improve our knowledge of key drivers of youth drinking. Changes wrought by the neoliberal political climate of deregulation that characterised the last two decades in many countries including Aotearoa New Zealand have transformed the availability of alcohol to young people. Commercial development of youth alcohol markets has seen the emergence of new environments, cultures and practices around drinking and intoxication but the ways in which these changes are interpreted and taken up is not well understood. This paper reports findings from a qualitative research project investigating the meaning-making practices of young people in New Zealand in response to alcohol marketing. Research data included group interviews with a range of Maori and Pakeha young people at three time periods. Thematic analyses of the youth data on usages of marketing materials indicate naturalisation of tropes of alcohol intoxication. We show how marketing is used and enjoyed in youth discourses creating and maintaining what we refer to as intoxigenic social environments. The implications are considered in light of the growing exposure of young people to alcohol marketing in a discussion of strategies to manage and mitigate its impacts on behaviour and consumption

Consuming identities: alcohol marketing and the commodification of youth experience

Marketing has successfully used the postmodern turn in conceptualisations of the human subject and incorporated contemporary theorising of identities and self into its understanding of the key drivers of consumption. Such developments clearly converge in alcohol marketing practices that target young people where commercialized youth identities available for consumption and engagement are a significant element. This paper reports data from young people that reflect the uptake of such identities and considers the challenges that these developments represent for public health and the wellbeing of young people

Intentional use of te reo Māori in New Zealand newspapers in 2007

The study aimed to measure the intentional use of words in te reo Māori in a representative sample of newspaper news items about Māori issues.While te reo Māori was made an official language in 1987, it remains endangered and New Zealand remains one of the most monolingual countries in the world. The news items analysed were about Māori issues, and thus more likely to include Māori words. Only words with an alternative in English were counted, and the origin of articles was analysed. Forty-five percent of items included no Māori words. Only words with an alternative in English were counted, and the origin of articles was analysed. forty-five percent of items included no Māori words with an alternative in English, and the average across the sample was 2.4. More than half the Māori words counted described social culture. Use of te reo varied widely among newspapers. No regular Māori language promotion items appeared in the sample, and it provides little evidence of support for New Zealand's endangered indigenous official language.&nbsp

Understanding the Relationship between Activity and Neighbourhoods (URBAN) Study: research design and methodology

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Built environment attributes are recognized as being important contributors to physical activity (PA) engagement and body size in adults and children. However, much of the existing research in this emergent public health field is hindered by methodological limitations, including: population and site homogeneity, reliance on self-report measures, aggregated measures of PA, and inadequate statistical modeling. As an integral component of multi-country collaborative research, the Understanding the Relationship between Activity and Neighbourhoods (URBAN) Study seeks to overcome these limitations by determining the strengths of association between detailed measures of the neighborhood built environment with PA levels across multiple domains and body size measures in adults and children. This article outlines the research protocol developed for the URBAN Study.</p> <p>Methods and design</p> <p>The URBAN Study is a multi-centered, stratified, cross-sectional research design, collecting data across four New Zealand cities. Within each city, 12 neighborhoods were identified and selected for investigation based on higher or lower walkability and Māori demographic attributes. Neighborhoods were selected to ensure equal representation of these characteristics. Within each selected neighborhood, 42 households are being randomly selected and an adult and child (where possible) recruited into the study. Data collection includes: objective and self-reported PA engagement, neighborhood perceptions, demographics, and body size measures. The study was designed to recruit approximately 2,000 adults and 250 children into the project. Other aspects of the study include photovoice, which is a qualitative assessment of built environment features associated with PA engagement, an audit of the neighborhood streetscape environment, and an individualized neighborhood walkability profile centered on each participant's residential address. Multilevel modeling will be used to examine the individual-level and neighborhood-level relationships with PA engagement and body size.</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>The URBAN Study is applying a novel scientifically robust research design to provide urgently needed epidemiological information regarding the associations between the built environment and health outcomes. The findings will contribute to a larger, international initiative in which similar neighborhood selection and PA measurement procedures are utilized across eight countries. Accordingly, this study directly addresses the international priority issues of increasing PA engagement and decreasing obesity levels.</p

Creating intoxigenic environments: Marketing alcohol to young people in Aotearoa New Zealand

Alcohol consumption among young people in New Zealand is on the rise. Given the broad array of acute and chronic harms that arise from this trend, it is a major cause for alarm and it is imperative that we improve our knowledge of key drivers of youth drinking. Changes wrought by the neoliberal political climate of deregulation that characterised the last two decades in many countries including Aotearoa (Aotearoa is a Maori name for New Zealand) New Zealand have transformed the availability of alcohol to young people. Commercial development of youth alcohol markets has seen the emergence of new environments, cultures and practices around drinking and intoxication but the ways in which these changes are interpreted and taken up are not well understood. This paper reports findings from a qualitative research project investigating the meaning-making practices of young people in New Zealand in response to alcohol marketing. Research data included group interviews with a range of Maori and Pakeha young people at three time periods. Thematic analyses of the youth data on usages of marketing materials indicate naturalisation of tropes of alcohol intoxication. We show how marketing is used and enjoyed in youth discourses creating and maintaining what we refer to as intoxigenic social environments. The implications are considered in light of the growing exposure of young people to alcohol marketing in a discussion of strategies to manage and mitigate its impacts on behaviour and consumption.Alcohol marketing Youth Intoxication Policy New Zealand

E hoki mai nei ki te ūkaipō—Return to Your Place of Spiritual and Physical Nourishment

This paper presents the findings of the Perceptions of Papakāinga project, which explores the connection between place, genealogy, and identity for two Māori (New Zealand’s Indigenous people) communities: one living within an iwi (tribal) context, and one living within an urban context. The research explores how Māori-specific concepts which define home and identity are perceived and enacted across all participants, and how participants define ‘home’ in relation to fluid understandings of genealogy, community, and identity. Across the diverse experiences of participants, the concept of ‘whakapapa’ (genealogy), can be seen to act as a way to understand the connections between identity, people and place