Date of Graduation

8-2021

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Degree Level

Undergraduate

Department

Journalism

Advisor/Mentor

Chung, Jee Young

Committee Member/Reader

Brown, Lucy

Committee Member/Second Reader

Tompkins, Chris

Committee Member/Third Reader

Stauss, Kim

Abstract

Underage drinking is not uncommon and is associated with a number of school, social, legal, emotional, behavioral, health problems, and even death. This research seeks to explore alcohol-related social media advertisements across a variety of alcohol types, alcohol brands, and social media platforms. This was accomplished by a content analysis of the most popular alcohol brands’ advertisements on the Internet that examined the strategies used to appeal to consumers and the overall content patterns and characteristics of online alcohol advertisements. The strategy used differed by brand and alcohol type, but the most common themes included “taste,” “seasonal,” “holiday,” “recipe,” and “joke/humor.” The themes that were known for targeting young people in the past were not found as much as expected in captions and pictures; however, brands may still be targeting young adults and teens; if so, they have taken a different approach and found less obvious strategies for doing so, possibly by using new themes such as memes and flavors. In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, alcohol consumption in the United States has increased, social media use has increased, and underage drinking has likely increased; therefore, it is important that more research is conducted to better understand how these new popular themes are affecting young people.

Keywords

Alcohol; social media; advertisements; underage drinking; strategies

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