New media and old stereotypes. Images and discourses about drunk women and men on YouTube

Abstract

Female alcohol consumption has long been judged more harshly than male behaviour of the same nature. Scholars have shown that traditional mass media contribute to strengthening these stereotypes. The hypothesis of the present study is that new media, especially Web 2.0 environments, provide room for rewriting gender roles in relation to alcohol. To test this hypothesis, 2000 videos were retrieved on YouTube using a list of Italian keywords relating to drunkenness. The 142 most frequently viewed clips were then analysed through a multilayer visual ethnography method. It was found that representations of drinking practices on YouTube seem to reflect the conventional double standard. Female drinking is mainly interpreted as a sign of sexual willingness, and is strongly stigmatised. In most cases, moreover, women themselves actively contributed to creating the sexual meaning, both as video protagonists and as commenters. Analysed materials seem to show that even in a user-generated content medium such as YouTube, old gender stereotypes about drinking fail to be deconstructed. Conversely, the images and discourses that were analysed reinforce these stereotypes, reproducing the messages conveyed by mainstream media in an even more explicit and risky manner.

Keywords::

• gender studies
• media studies
• alcohol
• drunkenness
• YouTube
• user-generated content

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the ASL TO2 Dipartimento Dipendenze Patologiche C. Olievenstein as part of a wider research project on women and addictive substance and behaviours. We specially thank Augusto Consoli, the leader of the research project, and his team.

We also thank Paul Lemmens for his friendly and valuable suggestions.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest related to the present study.

Notes

^1.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v = RkodkHnoTOI.

^2.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v = XlgvyN_aDnI.

^3.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v = 5sDzhmzcyCU.

^4.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v = Ufpn8GkhdsE.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

S. Rolando

Sara Rolando is a sociologist. She has been working as researcher in Eclectica (Torino) since 2007. She is involved in various national and international researches on alcohol, particularly on the topics of drinking culture and young people. Interested in comparative qualitative methods, she is a Ph.D. student at the University of Helsinki.

G. Taddeo

Gabriella Taddeo has a Ph.D. in Communication Science. She is actually a researcher at Indire (National Institute for Documentation, Innovation and Research in the Educational field) and she teaches Language and Environments for Multimedia Design in the Course of Cinema and Media Engineering, Polytechnic of Turin. Her research interests are on the web 2.0 and its impact on cultural industry: from media production to the new forms of bottom-up fruition up to the engagement and participatory approach in the learning sphere.

F. Beccaria

Franca Beccaria, Ph.D., is a sociologist, partner in Eclectica, a research institute in Torino (Italy), contract professor at the EMDAS, European Master on Drug and Alcohol Studies, the Avogadro University (Novara) and at University of Torino (Italy). Her main research interests are alcohol and culture, drinking styles, prevention, and sociology of health. Last book edited ‘Alcohol and generation. Changes in style and changing styles in Italy and Finland’ (Carocci, 2010), and ‘Alcol e giovani. Riflettere prima dell'uso’ (Alcohol and youth. To think before using) has been published in 2013 by Giunti Editore.