Co-designing social marketing resources to minimise gambling harm among young gamers in the NT

gambling online - particularly in the context of video game play - is normalised amongst younger people. Using tenets of health promotion as guiding principles, this project will develop innovative and accessible resources for young people , as part of a social-marketing campaign to counter the current pro-gambling advertising that targets them specifically. Mixed methods will be employed - guided at all stages by a co-design (CoD) approach - to develop and assess novel resources for use in an NT based public awareness campaign.

Essentially, the project will co-develop and then “road test” campaign components with key stakeholders including people from eSports collectives, gaming developers, cross-disciplinary researchers, clinical psychologists, community members and gambling help services. A series of collaborative CoD workshops will inform a potentially scalable multi-media campaign aimed at engaging young people to think critically about gambling in online spaces – particularly in the context of gaming – and the development of harmful gambling behaviour related to such practices.

The main focus of the project is to ensure that the campaign resonates with young adults in the NT, includes locally relevant support information, and moves beyond simple education or awareness raising to actively promote positive attitude and behaviour change amongst young gamers. The developed resources, and the project overall, will be evaluated by collecting responses from a sample of the end-user audience, and the co-design/research team respectively.