Wine in a Time of Crisis: Bushfires, COVID, and Health
Academic
Jacqueline Dutton
School of Languages and Linguistics
Intern
Jennifer McFarland
School of Historical and Philosophical Studies
Project description
The 2019-2020 bushfires and COVID-19 have had devastating effects on the Australian wine industry, despite increased wine purchasing and consumption during this period. This difficult situation has provoked an ethical dilemma. Crisis marketing by the wine industry to garner community support in a time of economic and environmental distress must be balanced against the health and wellbeing dangers of promoting a product containing alcohol to potentially vulnerable consumers during the psychological and social distress of COVID-19 isolation. This project began July 2020, with an interdisciplinary team from Arts, Business, Health and Agriculture, led by Jacqueline Dutton. The intern helped to establish a dataset that might identify the presence and frequency of keywords in mainstream media informing the public of wine industry distress and the dangers of consuming alchohol in relation to marketing by the Australian wine industry and warnings from the Australian health industry/agencies. These datasets will be analysed to understand the confluence and balance of information provided to consumers.
Want to get involved with the Digital Studio internship program? We welcome applications from research students to undertake the internship, and from academics and external organisations interested in hosting an internship and supervising an intern.