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Studies led by Massey University Associate Professor Antonia Lyons, into links between social networking and young peoples use of alcohol is among projects chosen by the Marsden Fund to highlight its 20-year contribution to research.

Adminsistered by the Royal Society of New Zealand, the Marsden Fund has distributed millions of dollars of funds for academic research across the country since 1994. As part of its 20th birthday celebrations, the Fund has selected ten projects including Dr Lyons, for a year of promotion of its support for ground-breaking research.

"Its a real honour to be selected," Dr Lyons says. "I think it reflects the cutting-edge nature of our research, which is continuing to generate interest both locally and internationally."

Dr Lyons, from the School of Psychology, and a team of researchers were awarded $864,000 from the Marsden Fund in 2009 to lead a three-year research project exploring the convergence of social networking and youth drinking cultures, something she says represents an entirely new social phenomenon.

"In the digital age, New Zealands heavy drinking culture has gone online. Young adults organise drinking activities on social networking sites, know and emulate celebrity drinking culture, then celebritise their own behaviour by posting images online. Differences exist, with women more wary of how they look, and young Mori, Pasifika or unemployed adults more careful about what they put online."

"New marketing techniques - such as using geolocation-enabled smartphone notifications of nearby drinks specials - are often welcomed by internet savvy young people. But this marketing penetrates far into friend networks, and blurs the line between commercial and non-commercial content. To tackle the expensive and difficult social issue of problematic youth drinking, we need to understand how social media affects and reinforces our culture of drinking to intoxication," Dr Lyons says. Citing the example of online drinking game neknominate, she says the extremely negative consequences have even resulted in some deaths.

Her own interest in issues such as gender, identity and alcohol consumption started when working for six years as a psychology lecturer at the University of Birmingham in the UK. There she explored young peoples meanings and motivations to getting drunk with friends in the freezing cold of the city centre.

Continuing her work in New Zealand, insights into young peoples worldviews led to a focus on ways in which drinking cultures played out, and how these were rapidly developing within an online context. She joined with a team of researchers from media studies, Mori research, public health and criminology to develop the project.

"These social networking technologies -particularly Facebook- are used widely, regularly (throughout the day) in a mundane and routine manner becoming embedded within everyday lives and drinking cultures."

Alcohol sites showing particular brands reflect this with their own photos and comment threads for people to like.

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Massey alcohol research helps mark 20 years of Marsden Fund