Drink and Drugs News DDN July_August 2019 | Page 7

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‘drugs’, leads our thought processes directly to
a sense of threat and danger. This creates
social distancing between the stigmatiser and
the stigmatised, and contributes towards the
dehumanisation of the latter, painting them
as something to be feared. We all, to some
extent, fear what we do not understand.
People with little or no experience of drug
and alcohol issues have no other information
to draw on to temper their fear, and are
therefore particularly susceptible to this
mental short cut.
The notion of attribution error tells us that
people tend to unduly emphasise other
people’s character, rather than external
factors, when explaining their behaviours. This
effect has been described as ‘the tendency to
believe that what people do reflects who they
are’. This is especially likely to occur when
someone has little experience of the external
factors that drive addiction. The mental short
cut of hearing the word ‘drugs’ and
immediately associating this with fear leads
people with drug and alcohol problems to be
personally blamed and shamed.
As people learn more they are less likely
to blame an individual, and more likely to
seek an understanding of the complex social
drivers of the harms of addiction, such as
poverty, deprivation, childhood experiences,
poor health, social policy and lack of social
mobility and opportunity. Gaining
knowledge and experience means the
mental short cut is interrupted by a more
thoughtful consideration. However, as Tim
Berners-Lee observed, the benevolent design
of social media, which offers the promise of
a collective considered judgement on the
world around us, so often presents simple,
quick and shallow mistaken thinking that
reinforces prejudice instead.
With this in mind, we set out to analyse all
public UK social media posts on the subject of
drugs and alcohol over a two-month period
between December 2018 and January 2019.
Unsurprisingly, we found more than 75,000
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uses of stigmatising language, as well as
evidence that stigmatising tweets/posts are
highly likely to ‘go viral’. The vast majority of
these stigmatising social media posts were
focused on drug use, and were not apparently
intended to be directly malicious or abusive.
There was a high percentage of people using
stigmatising drug-related terms to be
humorous in order to reap that coveted social
media reward – getting attention.
However, discussion of alcohol problems
and homelessness was much more
compassionate. Here we saw the more
benevolent design of social media coming into
effect, with more discussions of an empathetic
nature involving broader social context and
social policy implications. This suggests that the
more familiar issues of alcohol problems and
homelessness reduce the tendency to blame
the individual, and increase the likelihood of
consideration of the context of the issue. We
also saw these more considerate messages
gaining the reward of online attention in the
form of likes, shares and retweets.
So, what can we do to encourage the
benevolent design of social media to reduce
stigma? Our sector has a longstanding, strong
tradition of sharing life stories as a means of
reducing blame and shame. One strategy that
has potential is to tap into this tradition of
story sharing through social media.
First person stories told by people with first-
hand experience convey the reality of addiction
with nuance and context. Internal thought
processes are explained and the reader has the
opportunity to connect with the issue on a
deeper level than purely observed second-hand
behaviour. Through stories, the reader/viewer
can get to know the storyteller and connect on
an emotional level with their hopes and fears,
vicariously experiencing the way the storyteller
sees the world in which they live. Storytelling
breaks down the shallow polarisation of ‘us
and them’, and brings people together as a
shared ‘us’.
What we have seen, then, is that stories
Thomas reached
more than 17,500
people on Facebook
alone with almost
1,000 people
engaging with his
story
can combat stigma by activating social
media’s benevolent design potential to create
a compassionate community of support. We
encourage others to explore this potential in a
manner that is creative, engaging and
respectful to the storyteller.
You can read the Phoenix report Care to
share – social media conversation about
addiction, recovery and stigma at
www.phoenix-futures.org.uk
James Armstrong is director of innovation
and marketing at Phoenix Futures
July/August 2019 | drinkanddrugsnews | 7