From sleepless nights and high blood pressure to anxiety and cancer, alcohol is taking a toll on our physical and mental health. But most of us think of alcohol as an essential part of social events and consider harm from alcohol to be something that only affects a minority of people with alcohol dependence. This very binary view of alcohol creates stigma, downplays the scale and breadth of harm caused by alcohol, and obscures the role of our environment – including laws and regulations – in shaping how much we drink.
Media depictions of alcohol reinforce this binary: we’re shown alcohol as linked to glitz and glamour or to destitution, but rarely much in between. And big alcohol companies spend millions linking alcohol to the former, while suggesting that it is individuals who are solely to blame if they fail to ‘drink responsibly’.
It's time for a new story, which builds a movement for change.
Framing is about making deliberate choices about how we communicate. In 2021, we commissioned a three-year research project to understand how people currently think and feel about alcohol harm and what causes it, in order to learn about how we can better tell stories that change hearts and minds. Led by the University of Stirling, with partners including Alcohol Change UK, the research team:
- explored public perceptions and how they differed from expert views
- used the findings to develop and test new framing approaches to strengthen public understanding and support for effective solutions to alcohol harm
- worked with communications experts FrameWorks UK who developed a communications toolkit based on the findings.
Together the research project and toolkit offer guidance for whenever we are communicating about alcohol and the harm that it causes, offering practical framing recommendations to help deepen understanding and built support for action.
We're proud to share these findings with everyone who wants to tell this new story, and reduce the harm that alcohol causes in our society.
There are three outputs from this project:
How to Talk about Alcohol – Toolkit. This toolkit sets out how we can tell a more powerful story about the negative impact of alcohol in our lives to build understanding, support, and action to reduce harm and improve health and wellbeing. This toolkit is for anyone who wants to tell this new story and reduce the harm that alcohol causes in our society.
A full report of the research on which the toolkit is based, setting out the five-stage process that developed and tested framing approaches. Fitzgerald N, Morris J, O’Donnell R, Angus K, Brown J, Castellina M, Fenton L, Garnett C, Holmes J, Howell R, Mitchell G, Mitchell H, Morgan A, Oldham M, Woodrow N (2024). Framing Alcohol Harm: changing public perceptions of alcohol, alcohol harms and policies in the UK. Stirling: University of Stirling.
An executive summary of the research. Fitzgerald N, Morris J, O’Donnell R, Angus K, Brown J, Castellina M, Fenton L, Garnett C, Holmes J, Howell R, Mitchell G, Mitchell H, Morgan A, Oldham M, Woodrow N (2024). Framing Alcohol Harm: changing public perceptions of alcohol, alcohol harms and policies in the UK. Executive Summary. Stirling: University of Stirling.
This project was commissioned by Alcohol Change UK and led by the Institute for Social Marketing and Health (ISMH) at the University of Stirling, with University College London, University of Sheffield, London South Bank University, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and supported by FrameWorks UK.