This study analyses everyday value constructs pertaining to the Finnish gambling profit-based state grant system – an institution that channels proceeds from the state gambling monopoly to the third sector. Recently, various experts have questioned the system because of its connections to gambling. Using the concept of mundane reasoning, the article maps out everyday understandings of the system. The study analyses three datasets that represent different mundane arenas: focus group interviews with Finnish citizens, interviews with welfare-promoting third-sector organizations, and articles from the Finnish daily newspaper Helsingin Sanomat. The results show that mundane ideas strengthen the role of the public sector as a primary service provider and the third sector in adding value to it. The article concludes that the gambling profit-based grant system represents both universalism and particularism in mundane reasoning. The arguments provided are important in view of the current discussions about the roles of the third and public sectors in the Nordic welfare state.

Introduction and aims

This study has, for the first time, mapped the extent to which alcoholic beverage brands operating on the Swedish market follow national advertising regulations and industry self-regulating codes in their postings on social media.

Design and methods

All social media content posted on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram by 52 brands operating in the Swedish market was gathered from three sample months in 2014, 2016 and 2017. A content analysis was performed.

Results

An audit of the 1204 posts shows that the brands' social media content conforms rather well with the industry's own self-regulation codes. However, the studied beverage brands had alarmingly inadequate age-gates to social media accounts. Advertisements for alcoholic beverages must be clearly distinguishable from advertisements for non-alcoholic beverages, according to the Swedish Alcohol Act criteria. These criteria are fulfilled to a varying degree among the posts in the analysed data. Advertisements for non-alcoholic beverages give companies a greater leeway in terms of shape and content of the post through logotypes, settings and connotations. However, advertisements of non-alcoholic beverages continue to convey the brand connotations and image to consumers.

Discussion and conclusions

Regulating alcohol advertising in online milieus can be very difficult because of the complex mixture between quickly evolving techniques and the diverse nature of communication messages targeting consumers. Many countries, including Sweden, are now focusing on how to enforce effective policies. This short report strives to shed some light on the scope and content of commercial messages on Swedish social media platforms.

The paper discusses the relation between a concept of addiction and the terminology used for its communication, drawing on and analyzing historical citations from the Oxford English Dictionary. The history of words used in English illustrates that terms for a concept change over time, often by an existing word being repurposed. Addiction as a term existed prior to the contemporary concept, but with a descriptive meaning that did not carry the explanatory power intrinsic in the modern variant. So its use as a word for the modern conception of the addiction phenomenon was delayed well beyond the emergence of the concept. The experience in English of interplay between concept and terms is discussed in the context of two frames: of influence in both directions between medical and popular concepts and terms, and of cross-cultural variations in the concept and of terms for it.