Our Economic Model & gambling ads
Addiction Economy Thought for the Day - a near perfect mapping of our Economic Model of Addiction in action here with the blend of social media and gambling.
Great research from Raffaello Rossi and team at the University of Bristol
1. Addictive product formulationn
Two at once here, gambling and the addictive product design of social media.
2. Predatory Marketing
Advertising for gambling which is disguised as social media content, and uses cultural references deliberately targeted at children but pretends not to be.
3. Misinformation.
"A spokesperson for the Betting and Gaming Council (BGC) said: “Advertising must comply with strict guidelines and safer gambling messaging. The government has previously stated research did not establish a causal link between exposure to advertising and the development of problem gambling". This is Number 1 of Grant Ennis 9 Frames of Subversion 'Denial'.
This is linked also to the fact that the majority of gambling research is paid for by companies who repress findings they don't like. Explored in detail in a brilliant and shocking book I just read called Vicious Games - Capitalism and Gambling by Rebecca Cassidy.
4. Undermining of Political Action
Fascinatingly, as Rebecca's painstaking research shows, the new style of digital gambling was ushered in not by companies, but by the Labour Party and Tessa Jowell, who decided the UK would be a leader in gambling, and so reclassified it from a regulatory perspective as a leisure industry. Much to the old school bookies' surprise, they allowed them to advertise and the digital gambling community with its Fixed Odds Betting Terminals, advertising and online betting was born. Ushering in one of the most lax gambling regulatory regimes in the world has had terrible consequences for UK citizens. As the report The Economic and Societal Cost of Harms Associated with Gaming from the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities 2023 shows.
https://lnkd.in/eCdHRCa5
Here is our Economic Model - the 4th model of addiction, alongside the Social, Biological and Psychological and it's 4 component as above:
https://lnkd.in/enuF7_t4
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/mar/17/sneaky-social-media-ads-are-luring-young-into-gambling-say-campaigners