What’s the story on addiction? Popular myths in the USA and Finland

Abstract

The study inquires into popular myths on addiction in two countries: Finland and the USA. It provides evidence of the manners in which the typical media narratives incorporate basic value traits from their context of origin. We distinguish some main features in the narrative set-ups that support different solution repertoires for dealing with addiction. Belief and hope are crucial story elements associated with the US emphasis on group formation and local empowerment. The individual is assigned obligations and can be morally condemned. In the Finnish journalistic prose, there seems to be an inherent belief that the agenda-setting in itself will propel the question into the institutionalised welfare state solution machinery. The occurrence of a story resolution was customary in the US stories, whereas the Finnish stories were typically left pending. The evidence produced has implications for the ongoing debate regarding the mainstreaming of both definitions of and solutions to addiction problems.

Keywords:

• drugs
• geography
• welfare systems

Acknowledgements

The research of this study has received funding from the Academy of Finland, and from the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013), under Grant Agreement nº 266813 – Addictions and Lifestyle in Contemporary Europe- Reframing Addictions Project (ALICE RAP). Participant organisations in ALICE RAP can be seen at: http://www.alicerap.eu/about-alice-rap/partner-institutions.html.

Notes

1. Google News is a computer-generated news site that aggregates headlines from news sources worldwide, grouping similar stories together before displaying them. The display can be customised to the reader’s interests, but our searches were performed without any personalised search settings. According to Google ‘stories are sorted without regard to political viewpoint or ideology’. Retrieved January, 2013 from http://news.google.com/intl/en_us/about_google_news.html.

2. Googlenews.com, Ampparit.fi, yle.fi.

3. Helsingin Sanomat, Iltalehti, Iltasanomat, Hufvudstadsbladet, Aamulehti.

4. PsychCentral.com is described as ‘the Internet’s largest and oldest independent mental health social network’. Accessed: 2012, December 12. Retrieved from http://psychcentral.com/about/.

5. HS = Helsingin Sanomat, the largest daily newspaper in Finland.