Advertisements for gambling products have historically been restricted due to their potential to normalize gambling and contribute to excessive gambling behaviours among vulnerable populations. However, social media enables gambling operators to promote products and brands with fewer constraints than in traditional forms of media. This study investigated how social media is used by gambling operators to promote gambling activities including an analysis of the latent messages that are conveyed. A representative sample of major land-based and online gambling venues and operators, including casinos, clubs, hotels, lottery and wagering operators (n = 101), was obtained. Websites and social media profiles of gambling operators were audited to investigate the types of social media used, content of promotions, and prevalence of responsible gambling messaging. The results showed that Facebook and Twitter were the dominant platforms used, most commonly by casinos and online wagering operators. A key finding was that online gambling operators included gambling content in conjunction with related news and events, as well as unrelated content, as way of normalizing gambling within a broader social context. Unlike land-based gambling promotions, responsible gambling information tended not to feature in operators' posts and profiles. The key messages propagated in social media gambling promotions were positively framed, and tended to encourage gambling using a range of cross-promotional tactics to emphasize the winning aspect of gambling. The implications of freely accessible and pervasive gambling promotions via social media are discussed with respect to the general community as well as vulnerable populations.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 60. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 10 November 2019.
All research outputs
#781,474
of 27,774,969 outputs
Outputs from Journal of Gambling Studies
#47
of 1,033 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#9,458
of 368,485 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Journal of Gambling Studies
#3
of 16 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 27,774,969 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 97th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,033 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 12.0. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 95% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 16 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 81% of its contemporaries.
