Social media is awash with alcohol promotion, with the country's top beer, wine, liquor and spirit companies garnering more than 2.5 million followers on Facebook, according to new research which has sparked concerns about alcohol advertising regulations.
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The research into alcohol brand activity on social media juggernaut Facebook is set to be discussed at a forum at Australian National University on Thursday evening.
The findings of the Like, Comment, Share: Alcohol brand activity on Facebook study found the top 20 alcohol brands had more than 2.5 million engaged followers on Facebook and posted more than 4500 items of content, which users interacted with 2.3 million times during 2012.
On average, brands posted four pieces of content a week and the companies with an Australian Facebook page recorded a 44 per cent growth in their fan base in the 16 months since the study's conclusion, which was commissioned by the Foundation for Alcohol, Research and Education (FARE).
The brands studied included 10 spirit, five beer, three liquor, one cider and one wine brand, with fan bases ranging 223,687 people to 55,579.
The study found fewer than one in 10 items featured responsible consumption messages and only four brands used a responsible consumption watermark or message in more than 20 per cent of their content.
Report author Nicholas Carah from the University of Queensland said the study illustrated Facebook's significant role in alcohol promotion and advertising but also raised concerns about current regulations around of alcohol marketing. ''The activity of alcohol brands in Australia is extensive,'' he said. ''Brands are becoming much more interactive, participatory and they're much more embedded in consumers' everyday lives.''
Brewers Association chief executive Denita Wawn disagreed that Facebook was an unregulated space for the alcohol industry.
''There are a whole range of regulations required of the industry in terms of its advertising and it doesn't matter what medium they use to advertise,'' Mrs Warn said. ''In Australia, we have a number of regulatory requirements and on top of that we have the Alcohol Beverages Advertising Code (ABAC) and that has very explicit requirements around the content of alcohol advertising.''
Mrs Wawn said the code also covered digital marketing including on social media sites.
She said ABAC last year also released guidelines on digital marketing. She added that Facebook had strict provisions preventing any users under the age of 18 from seeing alcohol adverts.
Mr Carah said the research highlighted concerns about privacy and transparency with alcohol companies able to use Facebook to create messages targeted to consumers based on who they are, their culture preferences, their peer network and location.
He said currently there was no regulation to address how the alcohol industry collected information about consumers, the kind of information which was collected nor how it was used.
FARE chief executive Michael Thorn said the current self-regulatory alcohol advertising was ill-equipped to the online environment.
Mr Carah said the research raised questions about the extensiveness and volume of alcohol marketing on Facebook, what kind of engagement and collaboration with consumers was appropriate and the collection of information.