Cameron Duff ALCOHOL MARKETING AND THE MEDIA: WHAT ARE ALCOHOL ADVERTISEMENTS TELLING US? Abstract The marketing and promotion of alcohol have attracted considerable controversy in Australia in recent years. Many researchers argue that the active promotion of alcohol has led to increases in alcohol consumption in Australia, particularly among the young, as well as a range of alcohol-related harms and problems. Others contest this view, whilst the alcohol industry itselfcontends that alcohol advertising is more concerned with winning and maintaining 'market share' than with attracting new drinkers. As such debates intensify, it is timely to consider changes in the content and format of alcohol advertising in this country. This paper examines a number of recent Australian alcohol advertisements, comparing those for beer with those for spirits and 'ready to drink' products in high/ighting some significant changes in the ways leisure and consumption are represented in youth cultures. I argue that many of these advertisements present alcohol as a potent means of enhancing young people's leisure experience in ways that risk endorsing excessive alcohol consumption as on appropriate or 'normal' leisure activity for young people. The marketing and promotion of alcoholic beverages through the mainstream mass media have become increasingly controversial in Australia in recent years. Many academics and health care professionals argue that the active promotion of alcohol has led to increases in alcohol consumption in Australia, particularly among the young, as well as a range of alcohol-related harms and problems (see Jones and Donovan, 2002). Whilst these arguments have been consistently rejected by the alcohol industry, recent research in Australia and the United Kingdom suggests that alcohol consumption has in fact become more prevalent among young people aged 14-24 (see AIHW, 2002; Brain, 2000). This research also suggests that young people are drinking more frequently, as well as drinking more alcohol in each drinking session - what some refer to as 'binge drinking' (see also Salvation Army, 2002). What is less clear is the extent to which the prominent marketing and promotion of alcohol might be shown to 'cause' this increase in binge drinking behaviour. . Reference to the burgeoning media studies literature suggests that such a debate may be difficult to resolve. Scholars interested in the study of 'media effects' have long abandoned confidence in any simple cause and effect notion of media influence in favour of more sophisticated models of scrutiny and interpretation, of 'encoding and decoding' (Hall, 1980; Street, 2001). This approach suggests a series of complex interactions between 'the medium' and 'the viewer' in which the symbolic meaning of the medium or the 'text' is contested and interpreted. This approach does not No. 108 - August 2003 13