The media has a central role in communicating and constructing health knowledge, including communicating research findings related to alcohol consumption. However, research on news reporting about alcohol is still a relatively small field; in particular, there are few studies of the reporting of biomedical alcohol and drug research, despite the assumed increasing popularity of biomedical perspectives in public discourse in general. The present article addresses the representational `devices' used in Swedish press reporting about biomedical alcohol research, drawing on qualitative thematic analysis of the topics, metaphors, and optimist versus critical frames used in presenting biomedical research findings. In general, the press discourse focuses on genetic factors related to alcohol problems, on the role of the brain and the reward system in addiction, and on medication for treating alcohol problems. Metaphors of `reconstruction' and `reprograming' of the reward system are used to describe how the brain's function is altered in addiction, whereas metaphors of `undeserved reward' and `shortcuts' to pleasure are used to describe alcohol's effects on the brain. The study indicates that aspects of the Swedish press discourse of biomedical alcohol research invite reductionism, but that this result could be understood from the point of view of both the social organization of reporting and the intersection of reporting, science, and everyday understandings rather than from the point of view of the news articles only. Moreover, some characteristics of the media portrayals leave room for interpretation, calling for research on the meanings ascribed to metaphors of addiction in everyday interaction.

Based on a summary and discussion of our previousstudies of media portrayals of gender and alcohol inrelation to the general, societal discourses of risk andpleasure, we aim to develop the gender theoreticalunderstanding of alcohol as a health issue. We arguethat even though the media provide various implicitor explicit instructions for women on how to act,both warnings and encouragements to drink areframed within basic gendered assumptions thatconcern women’s dealing with alcohol. Because ofthis, the discourses that construct women’s drinkingas either risky or pleasurable are in fact not separate,but rather two sides of the same coin. Drawing onthis analysis, we argue that much of the research onalcohol consumption and sex difference – and inparticular on women’s drinking – lacks in itsunderstanding of the gendered ideas and assumptionsthat frame and influence these practices.

Purpose - A growing body of social research analyzes how the biomedical interest in detailed molecular aspects of our bodies (genes, biomarkers, DNA) affect everyday notions of health, risk, and responsibility for health problems. However, this research focus has been largely neglected in social alcohol research. The purpose of this paper is to report on some early findings from a study of media portrayals of biomedical alcohol research and to present a rationale for studying biomedical alcohol research more broadly.

Design/methodology/approach - The empirical discussion is based on textual analysis of 90 newspaper articles published in Swedish newspapers between 1995 and 2010 and one-on-one semi-structured interviews with 24 newspaper readers about their interpretation of the newspaper portrayals. The motives for studying biomedical alcohol research more broadly are discussed in relation to existing research and theories of biomedicalization.

Findings - Firstly, we find that a large majority of the newspapers cite biomedical researchers to explain the mechanisms of addiction, and that biomedical research is often presented as revolutionary in scope. However, journalists also act as storytellers who explain the biomedical research results to readers. The reward system proved to be a central notion among the interviewees, who had their own, different and varying definitions of the concept. Secondly, we suggest a framework for analyzing how biomedical knowledge is produced, communicated and utilized by three types of key actors.

Originality/value - The study presents a novel framework for studying biomedical alcohol research.

Psychotropics and alcohol are psychoactive substances with different cultural meanings and opposing gender associations. This paper examines the Swedish press debate ongender and psychotropics and compares it with the press debate on gender and alcohol, aiming toidentify the conditions under which gendered moral boundaries of acceptable/unacceptableconsumption are defended. The study shows that boundaries acquire a heightened moral status innews stories (1) that deal with a topic related to cultural ideas about essential gender difference,(2) where the cultural status of the psychoactive substance is linked to selfish and/or hedonisticmotives, and (3) where innocent victims of consumption can be identified. Moreover, it shows thatthe “bad” characters constructed through this moral boundary are portrayed as exhibiting“excessive masculinity” and “insufficient femininity”. On the basis of these findings, it is arguedthat newspaper discourse on psychotropics and alcohol still relies quite heavily on gendered andheteronormative ideas.

During recent decades, biomedical research has increasingly entered the press scene, particularly in media stories of healthy bodies and lifestyles. One of the fields where this is visible is in the discussion of alcohol consumption and problems, a field where references to biological sex differences are common. This paper analyzes how facts about sexed bodily difference are made real in Swedish newspaper stories of biomedical alcohol research. Our findings indicate that newspapers represent the body at different levels of abstraction; from detailed descriptions at the molecular level (hormones and genes), through discussion at the molar level (body parts, organs and disease), to more general discussion at the social level (inner nature, sensitivity, and responsibility). We also find a double metaphorical meaning of the word alcohol: alcohol is a solution (a soluble liquid) that also dissolves the dimorphism of bodily sex difference.

Drawing on an analysis of the media debate on two Swedish rape cases involving alcohol, the present article argues that social norms and power structures are made visible both when debaters ascribe explanatory power to alcohol and when they do not. Using feminist intersectional theory,we argue that when debaters employ the concepts of “foreign culture” and “jet-set drinking culture,” respectively, to explain the rapes, they simultaneously (re)produce stereotypical discourses on gender, sexuality, class and ethnicity/nationality. The troublesome positions of the Immigrant, the Drink Slut and the Brat symbolize how these discourses intersect in the specific cases. To understand why alcohol is central in explaining rape in a fashionable area, but not in a socially disadvantaged area, we suggest that the official image of Sweden as a gender-equal, sexually liberal and multicultural society with small class differences blocks discussion of existing inequalities within the country. When rape happens in a place constructed as a “Swedish middle and upper-class area,” alcohol and intoxication are used to symbolize the “uncivilized,” unpleasant and malicious among Swedish men. When rape happens in “socially disadvantaged neighbourhoods” populated by “immigrants,” the unpleasant instead resides in the “foreign culture.”

The dominant approach to gender in alcohol research still conceives of gender in terms of binary roles and looks for explanations for gender differences in drinking. This paper challenges the binary approach, and instead analyzes the categorization of gender as created in Swedish newspaper stories about alcohol, published between 2000 and 2008. Specific categories examined include “responsible mothers”, “responsible parents”, “party girls”, “career women with drinking problems”, “violent men who drink” and “beer-drinking, sexist male athletes”. Based on this examination, the paper discusses how the media stories do and/or undo gender and how they encourage readers to act by the categories of drinkers that they describe. The study shows that the Swedish media stories produce multiple ways of interpreting drinking. Some of the stories undo gender through linking “male” behaviour (drinking heavily) to female bodies, while others undo gender by treating parenthood as more important than gender. Importantly, however, other stories reproduce the discourse of heteronormativity and gender binarism. The study suggests that analyses of media texts need to take the complexity of ‘undoing gender’ into account, for example by avoiding the assumption that gender is either undone or reproduced.