From criminals to celebrities: perceptions of "the addict" in the print press from four European countries from nineties to today.

Substance Use & Misuse, 50:439–453, 2015 C 2015 Informa Healthcare USA, Inc. Copyright ISSN: 1082-6084 print / 1532-2491 online DOI: 10.3109/10826084.2015.978187

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

From Criminals to Celebrities: Perceptions of “the Addict” in the Print Press from Four European Countries from Nineties to Today Franca Beccaria1 , Sara Rolando1,2 , Matilda Hellman2 , Michal Bujalski3 and Paul Lemmens4 1

Eclectica, Institute for Training and Research, Italy; 2 Department of Social Research, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland; 3 Department of Studies on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, Institute of Psychiatry and Neurology, Warsaw, Poland; 4 Department of Health Promotion, University of Maastricht, Maastricht, The Netherlands their own interests and agendas in mind. In order to produce information about the problems, one has to produce images of the people who have them. Which, then, are the characteristics of the groups who serve to illustrate these sorts of problems in the public images? In this article, we account for the differences between portrayals of the person who has addiction-related problems—here referred to as “the addict”—in print press in four European countries. The importance of looking into such typical representations stands clear in view of the great threats of stigmatization and marginalization that popular social construction of deviant groups tends to involve (Lemert, 1967). In the heart of the question lie views on individuals’ responsibility to exercise control over themselves and behave according to social expectations. The position of the addict, who represents a heterogenous population of people at any given time and place, but who nonetheless tends to be construed as being a rather homogenized population, becomes a crucial part of the understanding of what the problems are all about. Is he/she a victim, a criminal, a sinner, or part of a social problem? This paper explores explanatory relationships between the media construction of the addict and views about addiction related problems in Finland, Italy, Poland, and The Netherlands. Previous research has shown that the ways in which public speech frames2 addiction-related problems correlates with the ways in which welfare societies ascribe responsibility for the problems and view solutions to them (Hellman,

The article reviews portrayals of “the addict” in press items from Italy, Finland, Poland, and The Netherlands. The dataset consists of 1,327 items from four national newspapers published in 1991, 1998, 2011. The portrayals varied according to country, period, and type of addiction problem. Results can be read as four cases where different conceptualizations (“the sinner,” “the sick,” “the social problem,” “the criminal,” and “the famous”) assume diverse importance. These conceptual frames-of-reference are clearly neither unambiguous nor fixed. They are constantly modified and part of different trends. Keywords addict, media, normative theories, social construction, alcohol, drugs, tobacco, addictive behavior

INTRODUCTION

Who are the persons who become addicted to alcohol, drugs, and tobacco, or become engaged in other problematic habitual and compulsive behaviors? Popular views on excessive behaviors are shaped by information from different sources: people may know some things from hearing about individuals with the problems,1 or even from their own experiences. However, most popular perceptions are likely to stem from public representations: through cultural products like films, TV series, mass media discourse, as well as from “truths” disseminated by influential stakeholders with

The authors would like to extend their warmest thanks to Mieke Derickx, Maija Majamäki, Enrico Petrilli, Francesca Putzolu, and Sara Enrici Vaion for their accurate article collection, file management, and coding. 1 The reader is referred to Rittel, H. and Webber, M. (1973). Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy Sciences, Vol. 4, pp. 155–169 for an innovative analysis about problem categorization. They suggested that problems can and should be usefully categorized into two types: “tame problems” and “wicked problems.” The former are solved in a linear, traditional known and tried “water fall paradigm”; gather data, analyze data, formulate solution, implement solution. The latter “wicked problems” can only be responded to individually, each time a new, with no ultimate, repeatable solution. Drug use, misuse, “addiction,” etc. can be considered to be socially constructed “wicked problems.” Editor’s note. 2 The reader is referred to Tilly, Charles (2008). Credit and Blame Princeton Univ. Press. Princeton, NJ for a stimulating analysis about the dynamic processes of blaming and giving credit as part of framing. Editor’s note. Address correspondence to Franca Beccaria, Eclectica, Institute for Training and Research, Via S. Pellico 1, 10125 Torino – Italy; E-mail: [email protected]

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2013; Hellman and Room, submitted). In comparison with national inquiries into media images, the contrasting of the images between different European countries offers a possibility to discern the factors underlying the types of problems portrayed and the ways in which they are dealt with. Datasets were systematically gathered from one of the largest daily independent (politically unaffiliated) newspaper from each of the four countries at three points in time: 1991, 1998, and 2011. After that, an analogous coding and analysis of the materials was performed. This article posits viable explanations for the dominating framing of the person manifesting addiction-related problems in different times and in different countries. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

Social problems are not objective phenomena or outcomes. They depend on the claims made about them by those who are affected by them, and by those who effect and influence processes and outcomes surrounding them. This study analyses the targeted media representations from a basic social constructionist perspective; placing the discourse of the problems “within its context of culture and social structure” (Best, 1993, p. 119), paying attention to the circumstance that our understandings of the world is constantly created through the social process of communication (Berger & Luckmann, 1966; Schutz, 1970). Media stakeholders such as newspaper journalists, editors, etc., produce news stories on the basis of what they judge that people would like to and need to read about. Newspapers have both economic interests in selling their product, and journalistic commissions to inform, to entertain and to critically examine power elites. But in doing so they also participate in the construction of social problems using specific rhetoric journalistic tools in their narrative manner of speech. The construction of social solutions— which is indicated as well as contraindicated—is an integral part of this process. By examining images of “the addict” in the press we highlight the themes, messages, and values produced by the rhetorical devices that shape the ideological meaning of addicts in public discourse. In this view the category “addict” or “addicts” is a result of a semiotic production. The “label” of the addict can assume different meanings that will have consequences for the problems and the handling of them (Thomas & Zaniecki, 1918). The images of the addict become the results of “the activities of individuals or groups making assertions of grievances and claims with respect to putative conditions” (Spector & Kitsuse, 1977, p. 75). The focus of our inquiries is the ways in which the persons who are portrayed as having the problems are represented and defined as being deviant. Historically speaking, the problems related to addiction have been framed according to certain larger conceptual traits in different times and places. Even if the disease concept of addiction was introduced for the first time by Benjamin Rush in the middle of the 18th century and developed one century later by Magnus Huss, a Swedish

medical doctor (Heather & Robertson, 1989; Levine, 1978), the moralistic view about addiction (mainly alcohol), in which substance misuse was considered to be a vicious behavior, a sin, or a criminal problem, has still prevailed and was very articulated until the end of the American Prohibitionist period (Snowdon, 2011). The later de-moralization, on its part, moved the attention from the selected substance as being addictive in itself toward the selected individual, who should be able to exercise control over his drinking for physiological or psychological reasons. During the 1970s, the so-called “total consumption theory” was introduced by sociologists aiming to shift the attention from the individual disease to seeing types of alcohol consumption as being a result of a collective drinking culture, hence a collective problem. The theory proposed that it was only by reducing the total consumption of alcohol in the population as a whole that it was possible to reduce the negative impact both on the individual and on society at large (Beccaria, 2013; Bruun et al., 1975). All of the above accounted for perspectives continue to be part of conceptualizations of addiction-related problems, ascribing different roles to the affected persons—as sick, as victims, as part of a social problem, etc. A good case of how views on “problem” and “solution” are associated with images of persons with the problems is brought forward by Shugart (2011), who describes how novel American cultural understandings, practices, and policies regarding the “obesity epidemic” appear in media narratives on people who struggle with their obesity. Historically speaking obesity has been mainly attributed to personal responsibility, but according to Shugart’s (2011) analysis this appears to have shifted in favor of cultural explanations that describe obesity as symptomatic of, and secondary to, broader issues related to community, emotionality, and agency. One of her explanations to this trend is that since the majority of the U.S. population is overweight or obese according to current medical standards, a message that vilifies the majority of the audience, and consumer markets, is not in the best political and economic interests for media institutions and the corporations that fund them. The same kind of audience normality perspective embedded in the reporting is found in a recent analysis of different addiction-related problems in Finnish Internet reporting (Hellman, 2013). The normality of some habits, like checking e-mails or drinking alcohol, make them reported in a less stigmatizing and personalized manner than the types of behavior (such as illicit drug use or the misuse/non-medical use of licit medications) that is less likely to occur among the standard Finnish masses who are assumed to “consume” the media representations in question. The people with the latter types of problems are in the reporting more often framed as “problem groups” and not directly addressed in the texts (Hellman, 2013). Previous studies have documented that the role in society that the press chooses to take on when reporting about selected substance use vary a lot: it can be the one of formulating and defining what the problem is all about (Piispa, 2001), or bridging gaps between different political views on the problems (Törrönen, 2004). The

FROM CRIMINALS TO CELEBRITIES: PERCEPTIONS OF “THE ADDICT” IN THE PRINT PRESS

media possesses the means to amplify the extent of drug problems (Becker, 1963; Gusfield, 1963; Himmelstein, 1983; Levine, 1984; Musto, 1973) independently from the real trend of drug consumption and drug-related problems (Reinarman & Levine, 1989). Some studies have shown that the role of media can in some cases be the one of supporting or opposing government policies in critical periods of drug policy changes (Laurence et al., 2000). Traditionally, drug consumption is portrayed by media not as being an existential or lifestyle choice but as being a compulsion; drug users are portrayed as having “cravings” whereas to non-users are simply ascribed “desires.” Young (1973) has expressed the view that portrayals of drug users are constantly ill-informed and imprecise as the journalists lack access to correct information or are too affected by incorrigible prejudice. Since 1940, Lindesmith identified some myths that inform drug users representations in the media: the drug addict as a violent criminal; as a moral degenerate; as a person who wishes to convince non-users to use, or as a person affected by an inferiority complex. The sometimes deficient journalistic work behind the systematic repetitions of such myths has been exposed, for examples during the British “heroin epidemic” of the early 1980s. For example, the Liverpool Echo published a series of stories related to drug use and dealing, such as pushers waiting outside a school offering free samples of drugs to children in order to provide future customers. On closer examination, this example story was shown to never have been confirmed neither by drug users’ treatment services nor by the school’s head (Mcdermott, 1992). The main question that we pose to the study’s four newspaper materials is: Who is the typical addict in the press accounts under study? Although our inquiries are meaning-based and thus basically qualitative to their nature, we are interested in larger trends in rather large press materials. In order to discern these trends we have counted the meaning-based semantic units that have been qualitatively coded in each dataset. Although, the concept of addiction is certainly not a unitary one, and the concept category of “addict” or “addicts” contains a myriad of different images, meanings, and ideas, we have chosen to study portrayals of people with these different problems by referring to the addiction concept. The reason for doing so is the global popular trend to use the addiction concept for many different sorts of problems, also familiar everyday repetitive habits (Alexander, 2008; Furedi, 2004). This trend, which is very much reflected in mass media portrayals (Hellman, 2010), has brought about a need to produce knowledge on what this type of aggregated conceptualization of many different problems brings about in our understandings about them, and the possible differences that are neglected by doing so. MATERIAL AND METHODS

The contemporary newspaper is not only competing with “old” broadcasting media, but increasingly also with Internet news channels and new social web forums. For

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our objectives, the advantages of analyzing daily newspapers are, first, that the printed press has been around long enough to enable a historical perspective on how the framings of the problems have changed over time. Second, newspapers have an internationally recognizable layout: sections, headlines, fonts have all been developed over the years in a manner that is recognizable in format and function and constitute therefore a comparable genre, also in cross-cultural analysis. Common criteria when selecting the newspapers from the different countries were that the newspaper would be one of the major national unaffiliated newspapers and have a digitalized archive for back issues consultation through textual search. Conscious of the circumstance that the press in the different countries performs different roles in relation to the dominant political and economic powers (Hallin & Mancini, 2004; McQuail, 2005), we decided to sample one national newspaper excluding those either admittedly linked to political parties or just too openly sided with political positions. In Italy La Stampa was chosen, the third national newspaper with 339,498 daily circulation copies (ADS, 2012). In Finland the Helsingin Sanomat was selected, which is the most significant and widely read newspaper in Finland, reaching 951,000 newspaper readers in 2009 (Finnish Audit Bureau, 2010). Helsingin Sanomat is also the largest subscription-based daily in the Nordic countries. In Poland Gazeta Wyborcza was considered, which since the 1990s is among the top titles of Polish daily press, reaching average number of 4 million readers weekly in 2011.3 In the Netherlands, the NRC Handelsblad was chosen, one of five major national newspapers and opinion leader with a liberal voice. Currently, it can boast a circulation between 200,000 and 300,000 daily, and an average readership of about 1 million daily. The public arenas chosen for our inquiries are thus all established public voices widely disseminated in their countries of origin. The second step was to select years for collecting our text samples (1991; 1998; 2011). We chose the ones that were possible considering the availability of electronic archives. The first and last complete reporting years found in all archives at the time of the data collection were 1991 and 2011. The year 1998, almost the middle point, marks the increase of individualization trait in addiction (Hellman, 2010). The third step was to define concepts to be looked for in order to discern the coverage of addiction related problems. We first agreed on a list of concepts of phenomena that lay in focus of the research and cover the type of problematic behavior contemplated: alcohol, drugs, gambling, tobacco smoking, eating behavior (anorexia and bulimia). We also included some additional concepts for more recently occurring behavioral problems: excessive work, internet/TV use, shopping, and sex. Subsequently, the national research teams translated the shared list of concepts into a list of national terms to be used for 3

AGORA.pl. http://www.agora.pl/agora/1,110780,9274931,Gazeta Wyborcza.html—accessed 8.3.2013.

32% 7% 46% 3% 3% 2% 2% 6% 0% 0% 100% 182 18% 8% 59% 5% 1% 1% 1% 7% 0% 0% 100% 231 30% 5% 48% 5% 6% 0% 0% 6% 0% 0% 100% 196 44% 11% 22% 2% 7% 5% 2% 6% 0% 1% 100% 85 44% 27% 21% 2% 2% 0% 1% 3% 0% 0% 100% 94 43% 13% 39% 0% 4% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 100% 46 b

a

Some articles could contain two or many different problems, and so counted in each categories. Total 100% has been rounded off. Bolds indicate percentages exceeding 15%.

15% 4% 27% 22% 15% 11% 0% 3% 0% 4% 100% 74 14% 2% 66% 11% 5% 0% 0% 0% 0% 2% 100% 101 17% 4% 77% 2% 0% 0% 0% 0% 1% 0% 100% 128 49% 1% 25% 13% 1% 1% 4% 4% 1% 0% 100% 77 78% 0% 15% 1% 0% 0% 1% 5% 0% 0% 100% 95 Alcohol Tobacco Drugs Eating disorders Gambling Internet Shopping Work TV Sex Totalb Total (numbers)

55% 2% 19% 10% 1% 2% 1% 11% 0% 0% 100% 134

1998 1991 Types of addiction

1998

2011

1991

1998

2011

1991

1998

2011

1991

The Netherlands Polish Italian Finnish

running the searches in the electronic archives. The national teams possessed the relevant knowledge of the cultural specifics in concept and language use to come up with the adequate combination of words. Choices of search words were shared with the partners from the other countries and discussed thoroughly. For instance, in the Polish language, the idea of “addiction” is related to terms “uzale˙znienie,” and “nalo´ g” while in Italy there are not two terms distinguishing dependence from addiction, but only one term is used with both meanings, which is “dipendenza.” In Finnish there is no precise equivalent to the word “addiction.” The most common word for dependency is “riippuvuus,” but variations of the semantic construct “addiktio,” borrowed from English, is becoming increasingly common. In the Netherlands, “verslaving” is very close to the English meaning of the word addiction. The newspaper texts collection was conformed among the countries and words or combinations of words (Boolean search) were used to scan all text content in the electronic news archives. Compared to a keyword-search, the content search strategy avoids the bias caused by different praxis of the databases for signifying topics of the content. The material was scanned for doubles or even more recurrent articles and some articles were excluded because they were not relevant to the topic. After that, the data were classified according to country, year, and\break addiction. All in all, 258 items were selected and analyzed from the Finnish newspaper, 296 from the Italian, 212 from the Polish, and 561 from the Dutch newspaper, for a total of 1,327. Table 1 is an overview of the numbers of articles that made references to the different types of addiction-related problems looked for in the electronic text archives. Different addictions could be portrayed in the same text items, as in the case of a smoking alcoholic, or someone who is hooked on both alcohol and drugs. In these cases both alcohol and tobacco were counted as themes in the text. Percentages exceeding 15% have been bolded in order to mark the most frequent problems portrayed. In plain terms, a 15% occurrence means that the likelihood of a reference being made to that problem in the reporting (when using the search criteria of this study) was 15% for that year. Since the text source, the search technique and coding are the same within each country; all national numbers are internally entirely compatible. The research team developed a common coding scheme that was formalized in a coding handbook. Codes were developed and consensualized with the aim of individuating categories that were as unambiguous as possible and the coding process was carried out with qualitative textual coding software (Atlas.ti or NVivo). The present analysis focuses on the codes related to how the addict is described and depicted within the press items: as a sinner (ADD Sin), a sick person (ADD Sick), a criminal (ADD Crime), a social problem (ADD Soc), a famous person (ADD Fame), a person successful despite the problem (ADD Suc Despite), a person successful in recovering from the problem (ADD Suc Rec), or a

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TABLE 1. Amount of the type of addictions portrayed in the data from the different countriesa

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36% (66) 8% (17) 23% (40) 3% (6) 0% (0) 13% (19) 1% (1) 4% (9) 13% (23) 100% (181) 22% (36) 7% (8) 12% (15) 11% (19) 12% (16) 13% (14) 0% (0) 5% (9) 17% (28) 100% (145) 6% (6) 13% (12) 12% (11) 9% (8) 22% (20) 3% (3) 15% (14) 6% (6) 14% (13) 100% (93) 15% (16) 11% (12) 4% (4) 18% (19) 17% (18) 7% (7) 8% (8) 15% (16) 6% (6) 100% (106) 11% (5) 7% (3) 11% (5) 15% (7) 43% (20) 2% (1) 2% (1) 4% (2) 4% (2) 100% (46) 8% (7) 20% (18) 21% (19) 13% (12) 11% (10) 5% (5) 1% (1) 9% (8) 12% (11) 100% (91) 17% (11) 11% (7) 28% (18) 9% (6) 9% (6) 3% (2) 9% (6) 13% (8) 0% (0) 100% (64) 18% (14) 22% (17) 1% (1) 24% (19) 3% (2) 9% (7) 1% (1) 11% (9) 11% (9) 100% (79) 5% (2) 30% (11) 5% (2) 5% (2) 11% (4) 3% (1) 38% (14) 0% (0) 3% (1) 100% (37) Total 100% has been rounded off. Italics indicate numbers (frequencies).

a

1998 1991

1998

2011

1991

1998

2011

1991

Poland Italy Finland Codes

TABLE 2. Amount of codes marked in the material (given in percentage of the total amount of codes in the material from that year)

Clear differences could be observed between countries regarding the types of substances or behaviors focused in Table 1 in the reporting. In both Finland and Poland, the main addiction discussed throughout the entire time period was alcohol addiction, even though in the case of Finland a significant decrease in pieces on the problems occurred between 1991 and 2011. Some increased salience was given to illicit drug addiction and eating disorders in the later years, even if this amount of attention is still far from the one given to alcoholism. In contrast to the Finnish and Polish focus on alcohol, illicit drug addiction was the most frequently discussed problem in the newspapers from Italy and The Netherlands during the whole time period. Nevertheless a decrease is noticeable in 2011 when, eating disorders started to play a more salient role in Italy, and there is an increase of the material on alcoholism in the Netherlands. Among the “traditional” addictions tobacco is the least discussed in all samples of all four countries. An exception is the Polish material, in which tobacco dependency is among the three most common addictions discussed during the sample years. References to gambling, work, or sex addictions were close to non-existent before the 21st century, except for some mentions of work in Finland and the Netherlands. In Italy, gambling and Internet use received some considerable attention in 2011 (more than 10% of articles), while the gambling theme was overall almost totally absent in the Finnish material. Of the newer addictions, the Polish newspaper paid some attention to gambling, work, and Internet use. Due to the nature of the material and of the qualitative character of the coding, the amount of codes found in the different materials can provide only a preliminary indication of trends in the datasets. Keeping this in mind, we have displayed a numeric overview matrix of the total coding in Table 2. We have bolded the percentages exceeding 15%, as our estimation is that at the very least these numbers represent trends significant enough to represent relevant meaning-making features in the material unlikely to be just random, or depending on national search words selection or coding praxis. Due to the same systematic national proceedings (sources, searches, coding), trends within each country are to be regarded as “actual trends,”

2011

General Features

17% (18) 33% (35) 3% (3) 7% (8) 12% (13) 13% (14) 7% (8) 2% (2) 6% (6) 100% (107)

RESULTS

Criminal 15% (14) Famous 16% (15) Sick 15% (14) Sinner 11% (10) Social pr. 12% (11) Success despite addiction 5% (5) Success recovery 5% (5) Victim 6% (6) Deviant (other) 15% (14) 100% (94) Totala

1998 1991

The Netherlands

2011

person, or a group of persons, who is deviant in other ways than the aforementioned ones (ADD Dev). The number of codes that we mapped, per year, in each country does not correspond to the number of articles but to one semantic unit in which a specific connotation is expressed about the addict/s. In other words, the coding represents a sort of cultural prototype conception of the role or etiquette that is given to the addict(s) in the press reporting. Different codes may have been applied to the same article/sentence since the same utterance may channel many ideas.

19% (25) 24% (30) 14% (20) 11% (11) 1% (1) 8% (10) 4% (5) 6% (7) 13% (18) 100% (127)


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discussed and reliability checked within the national researcher teams. Table 2 presents some country-specific trends on how the addict is positioned in the newspaper coverage under study. In Finland, a general shift from the concept of sick and criminal toward those of “fame” and “successful” can be discerned, while only recently in Italy the image of “the addict” as being a “criminal” or a “sinner” seems to have given way to the concept of “sick.” In the Netherlands, an increase in the depicting of the addict as “famous” is shown. Addicts portrayed in the role of criminals seem to be consistent although a decrease in recent years is evident. The addict represented in terms of a “social problem” has vanished from the Dutch content. In Poland even if “social problem” appears to be the far most common framing in the beginning of the 1990s, it seems to have progressively lost its importance. Instead, “fame” and “success” portrayals have risen in numbers. The next section presents interpretations of what these trends involve and suggests some explanations to national and cross-national trends. Finland

The most noteworthy trend in the Finnish newspaper reporting concerns the salience of the stories about celebrities manifesting addiction-related problems, which doubled from 1991 when compared with 1998 and 2011. This fits well with a general tabloidization and a general individualized focus on the matters over the years (see, e.g., Hellman 2010). Overall, the code “famous” remains the most salient one in the Finnish newspaper material. The public face of the addict, and often the alcoholic, has increasingly come to be represented by people from the world of entertainment, culture, politics, and sports. In comparison, during the years under study, less salience was given in the reporting of Helsingin Sanomat to addicts as groups that represent social, or social political problems. Alcoholism is especially portrayed as the “disease” of artists and their affliction is referred to as a source of creativity. Another group of public figures portrayed with addiction-related problems was athletes, who were unable to handle their success and therefore turned to alcohol; such as the famous ski-jumper Matti Nykänen. Emphasis on personal stories and images of the addict goes together with the steep increase that has occurred in the category of the addict being portrayed in his/her capacity of having successfully recovered from their addiction problems, which was very salient during 2011. About half of the coding of celebrity addicts during 1998 concerns public figures who are claimed to be workaholics. The persons’ success is even explained by the work dependency, or obsession with doing work. Researchers, business leaders (society woman and promoter of Finnish culture, Lenita Airisto), artists, athletes (ice hockey player, Teemu Selänne), and politics are ascribed to the workaholic-label. The conceptualization of the addict as being a person involved in “criminal” activities, or committing some sort of offence (by law) varies in the Finnish reporting and the

appearance of this characterization is mostly frequent in discussions about alcohol and illicit drug use in prisons. The crimes reported as being committed by alcoholics deviate from those of drug users: the alcoholic’s offences are most typically domestic, or drunk driving, whereas the drug users are noted as committing burglaries and/or dealing in narcotics. The conception of the addict as being a person who is ill (“sick”), which had been one of the most frequently applied conceptualization in the 1991-material, was rarely found in the later Finnish material. When the addiction problem is referred to as an illness, the discourse’s inherent solution repertoires involve health care and other medical treatment paradigms. The alcoholic has to be cured and treated from his illness; abstinence is the explicit or implicit goal. The framing of a disease that just happens to its victims seems to tone down accusations for the person’s own responsibility in the cause of the condition. For instance in an article from 1991 drug use is emphasized as not only being a “social phenomenon,” but also as being a problem that “has to be recognized as an illness, the same way as alcoholism is an illness” (letter, 1991). The conceptualization of addicts as being “sinners,” was not often represented during this period. It also decreased over the years. The main meaning of “sinner,” within this representation process, is of a deviant and “bad” behavior disturbing and breaking the social contract (e.g., the alcoholic neglects duties, like work, and disturbs others with his drinking). The image of addicts as representing a “social problem,” or framed within a framework of social policy, was a little more common in the earlier Finnish material. The discussion touches upon the costliness for society at large of both providing and not providing treatment for substance users. The persons depicted as belonging to this group were mostly alcoholics and drugs addicts. Workaholics on the contrary are attached to positive attributes, they are persons who accomplish big things in their own fields thanks to hard work and diligence. This is the only behavior under study that is looked upon with admiration: “Disney was a genius and a workaholic, who created his business imperium by creating over the top fantasies for the American public,” says a report that concerns the world’s most popular tourist attraction, Florida’s Disney World (report, 1998). In the year 2011, the famous people with addiction-related problems are mostly portrayed in “successful despite addiction” recovery stories, a category of items that also covers people who are not famous. These kinds of stories portray the person’s recovery as being based on some sort of will power; a personal decision to quit, and admitting to oneself that one has a “disease-like” disorder. The success stories from all of these newspaper materials cover, with a few exceptions, only alcoholism. Italy

The most salient categorization of the addicted person in Italian press coverage during 1991 is as a “sinner;” as a weak person, who is unable to love and to feel regret. During this period most of the articles tell individualized stories, presenting the person’s full names, in which their


addiction to drugs is associated with some sort of “crime” (suicide, murder, robbery, drug dealing, organized crime) and expressed in a tone of moral reproof. Most of the press stories about criminal activities are related to heroin users and dealt with family tragedies. They end with a murder or a death; either the addicts kill their parents or addicted young parents cause the death of their children. Also there is a much-quoted case about an exasperated mother who killed her addicted son (short news, 1991). Quite interestingly the public opinion seems to express solidarity with her, as well as with a father who chained his addicted son to a bed. He was acquitted of kidnapping, since he was trying to prevent “the boy’s physical, psychological, and moral decay” (short news, 1991). The same sort of news tragedies sometimes involved cocaine users and anorexics. During the years 1998 and 2011, the “sinner” addictuser becomes a less prominent figure in the Italian reporting, and the addict is increasingly depicted as “sick,” a category almost absent in 1991. Along with disseminations of genetic and neurobiological studies, the addict is depicted as a chronic sufferer with psychiatric disorders and a person who needs treatment rather than prison. Nevertheless, the idea of the addict as a person with a chronic disease is neither completely accepted by prohibitionists—first of all the Church—nor by antiprohibitionists. Indeed the representatives of the Church express a fear of a dangerous underestimation of individual responsibility. In the view of the anti-prohibitionists, the deviant is stereotyped and socially constructed as being a passive slave of the empowered and mystified substance. Several articles in the year 1998 give voice to these political views. A general trend seems to be that the individualized stories decrease in frequency over time—with the exception of the ones about famous people. In contrast with the development in the Finnish reporting, the addict is increasingly related to and described as a homogenized collective than as being an individual; a fellow person. Eating disorders, gambling, social networks, and prescription drugs also are discussed during 2011 with less stigma and greater sympathy: “and the poor Isabella, who became a skeleton, was terminally ill and needed to be seriously treated rather than protected as the mother seems to have done” (letter, 2011). Nonetheless, the strongest moral blame continues to weigh against the addicts, even in 2011 seen as “vicious” persons who have “lost the moral sense” (interview, 2011) and “hostages of vice” (interview, 2011). Like the heroin addicts in the past, also the ones addicted to sex or to social networks are depicted as being someone who is not capable of maintaining a relationship, or to fulfill family duties. Another common contemporary theme is the one of young people involved in alcohol drinking-induced road accidents. The articles contain judgmental tones portraying young people as unable to discern “what is right from what is wrong, the good from the evil” (letter, 2011). With regard to newer addictions, the concept of disease is less ambiguous. In the case of adolescents, depicted as being “the most affected and involved social group when it comes to Internet addiction” (news, 2011), they are some-

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times described as victims of “bad” parents and the problem of addiction is narrated and conceived increasingly as part of a collective contemporary phenomenon rather than an individual problem, sometimes almost depicted as a social disease. Although the image of the addict as being and representing a “social problem” is not that salient in the Italian newspaper coverage, there is a small increase in this perspective over time. Articles that describe the addict as being social problems first appear in the material from 1998 about drug-addicts in prisons and young people with eating disorders. In 2011 drink driving is also depicted as being a social problem although references to the social costs caused by addicts are made only in relation to foreign data (alcohol, tobacco). Moreover, some recent articles employ the “homogenized” collective umbrella concept of “addicts”—referring broadly to different substances and behaviors—when maintaining that these people are victims of the economic crisis. Coverage about “famous” people, who numerically represent quite an important category, seems to be less judgmental than the one concerned with ordinary people. Many individualized stories during the 1990s as well as today tell about foreign politicians (e.g., Kennedy clan), football players (most items about footballer Maradona), and actresses who have trouble related to their alcohol or cocaine use. The cocaine-addict is, especially during the nineties, portrayed as being rich, belonging to the jet set and integrated in the party-world. Alcohol and drugs are depicted as being a normal part of the show-business environment and the famous people are somehow victims of this system: “The merchants of drugs act as entrepreneurs [. . .] chasing testimonials in football as well in the show-business” (news, 1991). They are vulnerable also because of all the pressure caused by their work. Addicted celebrities are mostly depicted as being sad and depressed. The press pieces are not seldom announcements of their deaths. Positive characters are quite rarely depicted during the whole period, with the exception of some writers—“self-destructive genius”—and a few medical doctors who themselves experienced drugs in the past (e.g., Freud). Stories about addicts who are positioned as being “successful” people (e.g., athletes, intellectuals, businessmen, who are also not popular and intended as a category) are very rare. Articles mostly address and show the fallacy of this kind of substances-use-related achieved success. Stories about “successful recovery” from addiction are even rarer, which actually have not been found in the data. Rather this process of change and pro-social adaptation and functioning is occasionally attributed to some characters, but often the real recovery4 is called 4

The reader is asked to consider that the term “recovery” is an overloaded container concept, catch-all-code, in the substance use-misuse intervention field, which is bounded by culture, time, place and stakeholder values, agendas, interests, and influences. Although there is no consensualized definition by a range of involved deliverers of care and services for its targeted populations recent definitions include the US: (1) Recovery from substance dependence is a voluntarily maintained lifestyle characterized by sobriety, personal health, and citizenship. Sobriety refers to abstinence from alcohol and all other non-prescribed

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into question and difficulties in social re-integration are stressed; former addicted being victims of prejudice. The remaining category “other deviant” includes quotations referring to addicts without a clear label or position within our coding rationale. These are, for example, references to the spread of the phenomenon where the subject is described as a broad collective group. In the year 2011 this kind of material is mostly about behavioral addictions. Poland

The most significant framing of the addict throughout the sampled years is the one of a “social problem,” which is strongly emphasized in questions of unemployment, homelessness, and social marginalization. A fourth of all the coded semantic units conceptualize people with addiction problems as part of a social problem. In the early 1990s, the most prominent addict characters are drug users, who are depicted as a threat to the public, and alcoholics, who are mainly seen as causing harm to themselves. In more recent years the HIV/AIDS threat, which was strongly associated with drug addiction in 1990s, decreased. Life-stories about poverty, homelessness, and social exclusion often contain alcohol consumption and they convey portrayals of individual experiences, telling about people living in the social dormitories under miserable conditions and sometimes dying due to these circumstances. The addicts are sometimes the target of controversial interventions of local authorities, for example, creation of social housing “containers” for those who are “most difficult tenants, alcoholics not paying rents, devastating homes” (report, 2011). Also, the question of social disorder in public places is an issue that typically provides the perspective of a distanced gaze toward the addicts, pointing out the discrimination that they face in society. Homeless people and alcoholics who hang about in the city center are reported to be obtrusive for clients and staff of restaurants and other venues. In one city, drug addicts are reported to be considered as “endangering the safety” and according to the regulation issued by local authorities “not allowed to stay in public places” (news, 1998). The positioning of the addict as a “sinner” was the second most frequent coding category in the Polish material. A common discourse surrounding the sinner role concerns the harm inflicted to unborn children and minors by smokers or alcoholics. In this case, a moral blame is clearly present and addiction-related problems are portrayed along with other immoral behaviors: “Let’s fight towards that there would be no alcoholism, divorce, killing drugs. The Betty Ford Institute Consensus Panel, Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment 33 (2007) 221–228; and (2) the UK Drug Policy Commission: “Recovery is a process, characterized by voluntarily maintained control over substance use, leading toward health and well-being and participation in the responsibilities and benefits of society” The UK Drug Policy Commission, Recovery Consensus Group Policy Report, July 2008; www.ukpc.org.uk, “Recovery” is most often associated with abstinence. Its dimensions, and the necessary internal and external, micro and macro level conditions for its achievement and sustainment, and the person’s necessary enabling resources as well as interfering flaws and limitations, have yet to be delineated in treatment ideologies such as harm reduction, quality-of-life, and conflict resolution. Editor’s note.

the unborn” (short news, 1998). According to some articles, drug addiction leads to moral decline. This trait of reasoning was found throughout the entire time period. It mainly concerned young people—a high school student addicted to heroin speaks about his colleague: “I wouldn’t smoke with her, she stinks already. One month more and she would put out for a dope.” (report, 1998). In another article, drug addicts are presented as those who are “passing their savings, stealing or become prostitutes” (report, 2011). As in the case of the sinner, the “criminal” addict is most salient in the material from the year 1998. Especially reports on drug use and on possession of any amount of illicit substances point out the addict as being engaged in criminal activities. On the other hand, being engaged in the drug scene is also depicted as a circumstance that will easily lead to all sorts of criminal activities, such as illicit trafficking, theft, and prostitution. Also a parallel between alcoholism and crime was outlined in the reporting. Stories about “famous” people and celebrities having a problem with drinking or drugs often contain both emotive and controversial issues because of their “indecent” behaviors. Among the characters of these tabloid-style stories are athletes, usually illustrating a declination of stardom, some singers, movie stars, and politicians. Substance users that were a bit more rarely portrayed in this tabloid discourse were writers, poets, painters, theatre, and movie directors, some of which were historical figures. Rather frequently, these figures were pictured in a fairly positive, romantic, or adventurous light. The “sick” category was the least salient portrayal of the addict in the Polish material and often it was mixed up with other meanings. In the 1991-articles, the HIV/AIDS theme was a characteristic trait related to drug addiction, but was mostly seen and represented from a social outcasts’ perspective. Later on a few articles try to explain the physical mechanisms of addiction (e.g., withdrawal) and of “new” compulsive behaviors. During 2011 the portrayals of addicts as “successfully” recovered constituted a significant group of the codes. Such articles typically tell about addicts who have been successful in overcoming their substance use-related problem (alcohol, tobacco, and drugs) and those who had acquired social success, such as “well-off young people from big cities and businessmen between the ages of 22 to 35 years” (report, 1998). Also workaholics were in 2011 portrayed in positive terms. The “other deviant” category comprised several social groups that were distinguished according to their specific collective identity presented in an addiction discourse, for example, young people who used psychoactive substances. Adolescents were subjects of particular attention by public and state institutions, politicians, and NGOs. In 2011, they were also presented as those who are at-risk of Internet addiction.5 5

The reader is asked to consider that concepts and processes such as “risk” and “protective” factors are often noted in the lay as well as professional literature, without adequately delineating their dimensions (linear, non-linear, rates of development, sustainability, cessation,


The Netherlands

In the Dutch material, which covers mostly addiction to illicit drugs, the addict as a “criminal” is the most salient figure. He/she most often is either characterized as being a petty property thief, pickpocket, or as being a violent threat, either against real persons or in situations of collective aggression or creating a general sense of insecurity for others. Sometimes criminals are denoted as being addicts but most often it is vice versa, addicts are shown “often” as being criminals. Addiction as a phenomenon in a criminal milieu is evident also in articles in which the addict is shown to be the victim of the criminal conduct of others, for example, addicted prostitutes being harassed. We also read some complaints about the stigmatization of the addict, resulting in violence against the addict; addicts themselves becoming victims of thievery. Some articles express concern over that this stigmatization could drive (older) addicts into committing property crime to pay for their addiction. It is noteworthy that in 2011 there was a surge in reports claiming that treatment would decrease criminal conduct and (petty) crime.6 When talking about the successful care for the homeless, an elderman of the city of Rotterdam is quoted “most of them have mental problems and they are addicted. Ever since they have a home, their health has improved . . . and they have less contacts with police and they produce less nuisance” (report, 2011). In a reaction to a call for higher sentences for recidivists, a criminologist counters this call by suggesting that these criminals are often addicted, and that “they look at the risk of getting caught rather than the duration of the sentence” (letter, 2011). In 1991, the chief of the Rotterdam police, backed by an elderman, was quoted suggesting at a drug conference that “hard drugs”7 should be legalized and be made freely available through the health care insurance in order to reduce crime (short news, 1991). In the year Warnings were getting louder during 2011 that the beneficial situation in which addicts were given shelter (either in a home or even in prison) may revert back to the awkward situation of the addicts during the 1990s, when homelessness was widespread. Some articles related the addict to abuse and to domestic violence. One acetc.), their “‘demands,”’ the critical necessary conditions (endogenously as well as exogenously; micro to macro levels), which are necessary for them to operate (begin, continue, become anchored, and integrate, change as de facto realities change, cease, etc.) or not to operate and whether their underpinnings are theory-driven, empirically-based, individual and(or systemic stake holder-bound, historically- bound, based upon “‘principles of faith”’ or what. This is necessary to clarify, if possible, if these terms are not to remain as yet additional shibboleths in a field of many stereotypes. Editor’s note. 6 Since the 1970s an extensive methadone maintenance program is operative (10,000 users), and since 2007 is supplemented by a heroin maintenance program for about 700 heroin users. 7 The categories “soft” and “hard drugs” are misleading, unscientific categories of active pharmacological substances that have been and continue to be used by individual and systemic stakeholders for achieving a range of goals and objectives that include the legal and/or social status of selected “drugs” in which their pharmacological actions and/or the simplified, albeit complex, “drug experiences”—interactions between person, place, and psychoactive substance—are not critical criteria. Editor’s note.

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count talked of the “anabolicus;” referring to “addicted” ex-athletes during the Communist era, who turned criminal after falling prey of the systematic encouragement to use performance enhancing drugs (anabolic steroids) (report 1991). In the Dutch selection of references in which the addict is depicted as being a “sick” person, it is often “sick by association.” Although articles in the 1991 give little hints about addiction being the result of a medical condition, they still associate being an addict with mental and physical deviance; deviant as a result of being an addict. In this sense, the addict is associated with the “sick” (stigma) rather than being depicted as being “sick,” as in a victim of a constitutional, medical condition (as in a medical model); “sick” as an acquired status. During 1998 some reports, for example, discussing plans for a heroin maintenance trial, open the discussion that addicts should be perceived and treated as being chronic patients. In 2011, a physician working in an addiction treatment clinic is said to have “no illusions about the possibilities to cure addiction,” and is quoted saying: “a doctor who wants to cure, should treat bone fractures or births. I can only try to contain the addict’s misery” (report, 2011). In 1998, we also find the first accounts of anorexia and bulimia as illnesses, and of gambling addiction or XTC (MDMA) use as resulting from possible psychiatric illnesses (e.g., ADHD), and which should be treated as such. In 2011, this trait is articulated in several accounts, which claim that addiction is a psychiatric illness, and the condition is referred to as a disease of the brain.8 The “celebrity” in the depiction of addicts is represented from sports, arts, entertainment, and fictional characters. The recent rise in references in this category deals mostly with the arts and entertainment world. This could hint to a general trend toward a tabloidization of newspaper content, where the personal story slants and details of the media target’s personal life become an integrated part of the news report. However, portrayals of the private life of famous people remain rather rare content features in the NRC, aspiring to maintain the profile of a quality broadsheet newspaper. The addict in fictional characters was often depicted as being a rather strong 8

The reader is reminded that the medicalizing of “addiction” to selected psychoactive substances (substance use disorder) as well as to selective human behaviors in the DSM IV and V (American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSMIV), 4th Ed.; 5th Ed. American Psychiatric Association: Washington, DC, 1994; 2014) is a relatively recent outcome of active and influential stakeholders. There are many disease models; not just one. These include, among others, biochemical-based models, actuarial, functional, experiential, social, political, religious-spirit-animism, economic, and consumer-based models. Second, each have their own critical definitions, criteria, goals and agendas, constituencies, indicated and contraindicated techniques and services, “healers” and change agents, preferred sites for intervention, temporal parameters, and stake holders. Each has their unique ethical associated issues. An important consequence of such “disease mongering” labeling is that it does not sufficiently serve basic diagnostic purposes of gathering needed information in order to make a needed decision nor give the minimum of needed evidence-based information—etiology, process, and prognosis—for effective intervention planning if and when it is needed. Editor’s note.

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character, with substance use and misuse as an integral part of their heroic life and survival. For example, the following remark is made about a female drug user in a movie: “a professional drug user, good only in her profession, which is the scoring of the drug. The drugs do not weaken her though. On the contrary, life on the streets makes her strong, fast and agile” (review, 1991). Another interesting observation, which was also made in the materials from the other countries, was that in the celebrity category the addict could have a higher socioeconomic status, being rich and successful. Often, the identified addiction problem was the one of being “addicted to work” (as in workaholic). The addict depicted as being a “sinner” is not a strong sentiment in the Dutch newspaper reports. In 1991 there are some accounts of addicts feeling guilt and repentance. In 1998, one of the few articles mentions the solace one can find in solitude after a life lived in sinful self-indulgence. In 2011, several articles relate to religious (Christian as well as Islamic) objections to drug use. Addiction is referred to as being “evil.” A reverend from a Dutch town Urk in the Dutch Bible belt is quoted: “booze makes up part of the Urk culture. For many it is even holier than the will of God . . . Alcohol is a vile evil in our town” (report, 2011). In a sarcastic account, the Dutch newspaper reported about Italian’s normative beliefs where tax evasion is pardonable whereas being an addict is seen as being morally wrong. However, morality is not a heavy theme in Dutch newsprints. The image of the addict as being a “successful” person appears in reports not only as a person overcoming addiction. Some reports give accounts of addicts as having adapted socially (as in an article describing Polish drinking practices), strong and powerful, sometimes thanks to the substances and their use, rather than in spite of them. Examples include: the person evading army conscription, painters, computer nerds, and writers. In 1998, more articles report on controversies over the benefits of addictionprone behaviors while, in 2011, most articles are accounts of the successful mastery of the addiction. Within the category of “other deviant,” in 1991 the addict is portrayed as adapted to a certain social life. Also, portrayals conveyed the addict’s ability to sustain himself (selling dope to other users); being different but equal to “us,” a rational hedonist, adding extra’s to an otherwise sad life. In 2011, the addicts in this category are, for example, gamblers who seek a recreational outlet, gamers that have an “image” problem, living dangerously on the “safe side of the street,” and permissible transgressors, more easily pardoned than “racists” and “anti-Semitics.”

DISCUSSION

Our analysis of press images of persons who are addicted to a range of licit as well as illicit substances, or who experience problems with other problematic habitual and compulsive behaviors, has demonstrated some differences both between countries and over time.

To begin with we inquired about the typical problems covered in the reporting on addictions. We see that the “old” substance-related problems still dominate all material, dividing the country materials into two pairs: in the Finnish and Polish materials there was a clear dominance of alcohol consumption-related problems in the reporting, whereas in the Italian and Dutch data, drug dependency was the most frequently reported addiction-related problem. Both Poland and Finland have manifested the same historical pattern of a dry drinking culture with high and intoxicated consumption of spirits (and beer later on), and low consumption of wine related to meals. Alcohol has, consequently, become the addictive substance and the addiction problem, most likely to happen, and most salient and important in the cultural products of these North European cultures. Drug use has been a more “typical” addiction reported on in the drug policy avant-garde and more middle European oriented Netherlands, as well as in Italy, where drugs are the addictive substance around which there is most consensus of its addictive nature. Our qualitative inquiries into the ways in which the addicts were portrayed in the different materials showed a strong correlation between our addict categories (victim, sinner, famous, etc.) and the type of problems that were covered in the reporting (alcohol, drugs, tobacco, etc.). The most typical portrait and role of the person who gets hooked on substances and behaviors in newspaper reporting is dependent on the type of addictive behavior being most talked about in the reporting at the time and place in question. Since the repetition of certain ideas and clichés is a core mechanism through which the mass media produces myth (Barthes, 2000 [1957]), the overall “gathered” impression of an addict character seems likely to be the one most talked about. The character of the most salient addict profile will also come to color the overall impression of “the addict” as a unified category of people. Our analysis shows, for example, that drug addicts and alcoholics were more likely to be connected with criminal activities than, for example, smokers or people with eating disorders. Based on our inquiries, we suggest that the most salient characteristics of the addict most typically discussed in the media, will be the characteristics that permeates the overall popular attitudes toward the problem holders. These will be colored by their national context as they are related to the historical developments in the different countries as well as to the ways in which the mass media have taken on different roles in their reporting on these happenings. Also, deeper culturally embedded circumstances, like the ways in which a culture understands the topic of addiction-related problems, starting from the existence of such a concept in the language, conceptualizations of human behavior, and underlying value traits and senses of morale. In the Finnish material, the typical sufferer of addiction-related problems is a personified, famous, alcoholic. We interpreted a shift from earlier portraits of a problem-holder who is ill to the public and successful figure as in line with an earlier established general


development toward a greater emphasis on individual achievement in the Finnish reporting on addiction-related problems (Hellman, 2010). In earlier times the “wrongdoers” were, in line with this Nordic society’s inclusive agenda, not to be named or shamed, and their experience of successful recovery was not a valuable press content in this daily newspaper, which used to have a rather stiff and uptight reporting format and style up until the late 1990s. Addicts were in earlier times portrayed as being and representing a rather abstract problem for decisionmakers or officials who do not prioritize resources correctly. Nowadays the addict in the press reporting is not any random street “drunkard,” but he/she can be anyone (poor, rich, you, me) and the addiction phenomenon is noticeably made public and personified, especially through the stories on famous persons. This trend toward representation of an issue through a personified celebrity was not as clearly transmitted in the Italian, nor in the Dutch or Polish materials. The high occurrence of personal stories in the press could be explained by the search criteria for the collection of the texts being that they were to include the phenomenon/concept of addiction. As the English concept of “addiction” already contains in its definition an individualized slant, looking explicitly for reporting concerning this phenomenon would automatically ensure that some perspectives would be left out of the material (Hellman 2010). In Finland, when substance users or gamblers are referred to as being a social problem, as a target of social engineering or policies, they are seldom explicitly referred to as “addicts.” They are more often discussed in terms of “people with substance-related problems” or “people with gaming problems.” This actualizes the question of whereas there is a unitary concept of addiction that can be researched in cross-cultural representations. Is there a core understanding of what the problems are all about? Our materials strongly indicate otherwise. In Italy, the largest trend in the being ill. In the past, a family-centered and rather moral individualized perspective was salient; drug addiction reporting especially during the early nineties’ transmitted sad newspaper stories about crimes and heroin addicts. Due to the AIDS epidemic in the 1990s, the problem of addiction sparked a big public debate. The individualized press stories seemed to meet the objective of either arousing sympathy or disapproval, depending on the advocated argument of the debate at the time (Beccaria & Rolando, 2013). Probably due to its typical “wet” drinking cultural pattern of viewing alcohol use (relating to alcoholic beverages as being a food and not as an intoxicant) (Beccaria, 2010), “alcohol” was not framed as being associated with an addiction problem to the extent that it was in the Finnish, Polish, and, to some extent, in the Dutch material. New behavioral addictions, which do not involve illegal substances, aroused less disapproval and in the 2011 data these appear to be described as social phenomena engaged in by collective subjects (mainly young people) rather than in individual stories. Yet, differently from Finland, the Netherlands, and Poland, in Italy “success stories” were rare in all sampled

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years including the most recent, 2011. It seems as if being “ill”—diseased—has substituted for the image of the “sinners.” There still remains, however, a deeper culturally situated seriousness—perhaps morally inflicted—that surrounds the who and what existential identity question. This complex issue is better adapted to other formats than the straightforward and, sometimes rather plainly compassionate, personal success stories. In the Polish press material, more than any other material, there is a clear articulation of addiction problems as being social problems on the one hand—with some tones of individual blame—and which is related to Poland’s post-Communist more religious culture. It is in contrast to Finland, which has had a secularized Nordic welfare society anchorage of the social framing of substance use problems, tending to leave out the concept of “addiction” of the social framing. We reason that both of these circumstances permit a logical bridge between the individual struggles (=addiction) and the societal action to deal with the problems (=the social framing of the addict). Alcoholism, which was found in a similar amount of press pieces in all of the analyzed years, was typically portrayed as having environmental origins and to impose policy interventions. Contrary to illicit drug and alcohol misuse, tobacco addiction was presented as being a health risk for both the smoker and third parties, who suffer due to passive smoking. Alcoholics were personalized especially in the semantic units of “famous” and “success,” while portrayed in a collective perspective in the “sick” or “social problems” categories. The rather unique trait of combining the personal and the social in the Polish material was further emphasized by the circumstance that the “sinner” and “criminal” categories, which were mostly transmitted as stories about individuals in the other materials, comprised both collective and individualized framings in the Polish datasets. In the early 1990s most reports on addicts were describing either drug addicts, who posed a threat to the public, or alcoholics, who were harming themselves. After the HIV/AIDS epidemic threat the social framing decreased and the framing of drug addicts became more individualized, although they were often portrayed as being “sinners.” However, and rather surprisingly, the depiction of successfully recovered addict was mostly represented by former drug addicts in the Polish material. In the earlier items collected from the Dutch newspaper, as in the case of the Italian material, the addicts were often heroin addicts. Although “the criminal” was a frequent category, the criminal conduct was not that often seated in the individual, but as a consequence of his or her condition of keeping up an expensive life style. In this way, the addict was still portrayed as being a “victim” of circumstances rather than being morally bad or mentally ill. Most negative aspects in the Dutch reporting were related to the material consequences of heroin addiction, rather than to the addiction itself. Particularly in the 1990s, stories about how addicts deal with their difficult life, how addicts become a victim of crime themselves, and of being a victim of mental and physical problems that result from their addiction, seemed to create a

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platform for a view stressing “care for” rather than rejection and punishment. The addict was depicted as being a person adapting to harsh conditions. Ideas that problems related to the criminal addict would disappear with a different, less harsh drug policy are a sign of the Dutch faith in heroin and methadone maintenance. This general inclination of the public to support a harm reduction policy is also associated with the absence of a clear moral judgment. In addition to the above accounted for problem-related and country specific traits, the study also showed that there is a big genre effect taking place in the newspapers’ articulation of the popular portrait of a typical “addict.” In personalized and more dramatic formats, like in interviews with ex-addicts or the family tragedy stories in the Italian material, the more or less same storyline could convey totally different roles for the person with the addictionrelated problems (as morally condemned, or just as a victim of a difficult life with a lot of pressure). Our conclusion is therefore that the status of the person with the problems ascribed in the mass media will, to a large extent, be a matter of “the agenda of the agenda setter,” in terms of a choice of perspective (the individual’s perspective, notifying the public about problems), reporting genre (interview, news piece, etc.) and forum (broadsheet, tabloid, TV, etc.). When it came to the problems reported on we were able to group the four countries into two pairs (alcohol in Finland and Poland, drugs in Italy and the Netherlands). When it comes to the reasons for the different images of the persons that manifest addiction-related problems, we see another constellation of “country pairs.” Both in Italy and Poland, we find some moral stances in the press accounts, even if these are of different types in each of these countries. In Poland, moralism occurs in portrayals of the wrong-doings of the persons to their environment in different ways, whereas the transmitted morality in the Italian stories is, in the earlier material, more representative of passionate or desperate individual criminal offenses (murder). In the Dutch and Finnish data, the moral or criminal offences are framed more as being circumstantial deeds, and not as being something that springs out of emotions or constitutional personal characteristics. Addicts are seldom sinners in either secularized Lutheran Finland or mixed-churched, mainly secularized Holland. They are more portrayed in value-loaded terms of sinners and victims in Catholic Italy and Poland. The increase of the medical-disease framing in Italy could indicate that it is not yet fully accepted, but the moral blame against the addict persists. The Church has certainly played a major role in construing the image of the addict as being vicious and unprincipled, as has been noted in previous discussions (Beccaria & Rolando, 2013). The moral blame is particularly evident in stories—the most numerous—about damages caused to the addict’s relatives. Here the focus is still on the family rather than on the individual. Addiction as a phenomenon seems to be less acceptable in Italy than, for example, in Finland, especially because it prevents the addict from car-

rying out his duties as a member of the family, which is among the main points of reference in Italian accounts. Also in Poland the moral blame is linked to the harm done to the third parties; minors, children, and fetus or to young people addicted to drugs. The moral aspect is present in several cases, however not in the foreground of the Polish accounts, where we find social problems, in the past as well as today. Here, the addict is still mostly referred as being a marginalized person who represents a cost and a problem for the community. Interestingly the “social view” does not include the other side of the issue. The conceptualization of the addict as being a victim of the society does not emerge from the Polish data to a large extent. The victims of addiction are rather children or other family members who suffer because of an alcoholic father or husband. These moral considerations seem to prevent an increasing trend of reporting about positive and successful images of “the addict” both in Poland and in Italy, as witnessed in the reporting from Finland and The Netherlands. However, the large space left to the stories of celebrities could be also seen as being an indirect form of “promotion.” CONCLUSION

The analysis of the press material from the four European countries documents that despite globalization, mass media portrayals of addiction-related problems tend to maintain some country-specific forms and roles. The people manifesting, or being attributed, with addiction-related problems in the press reporting seem to be attached with different attributes and roles according to: (1) the problems that are considered to be the most important and salient, and according to (2) the amount and forms of moral judgments accepted in that society generally, and in press reporting specifically. The data can be read as four cases where different roles of the addict—“the sinner,” “the criminal,” “the sick,” “the social problem,” and “the famous”—assume diverse importance in particular combinations. These socially constructed and sustained frames are clearly neither unambiguous nor fixed. They can be and are constantly modified by different causes, processes as well as relevant influential media stakeholders. The media narratives about addicts in the four countries reflect basic beliefs and assumptions that societies hold about addicts. They reflect the different patterns of interrelationship among the political and media systems, and the different rationales of the cultures and their social structures. Results encourage further investigation to understand the link between the changes of images given by media to the ongoing socially constructed addiction problem, and its addicts and those of the public and policy makers. Declaration of Interest

Franca Beccaria is a member of Scientific Laboratory of Osservatorio Permanente sui Giovani e l’Alcool (Permanent Observatory on Youth and Alcohol) in Rome, an


association that is mainly funded by the Italian Breweries Association. For this task she does not receive any honorarium, but the reimbursement for traveling expenses for one/two meeting/s per year. In 2012, she has received an honorarium from ERAB (The European Foundation for Alcohol Research, an independent alcohol research foundation supported by The Brewers of Europe) for participating at the project “Underage drinking. A report on drinking in the second decade of life in Europe and North America.” They also reimbursed the traveling costs for a meeting in Montreal and a meeting in Brussels. Together with the University of Torino (applicant) she got a grant from ERAB for the research “Images of adolescent alcohol use and health in Italy. A study of teenagers’ drinking and societal reactions to it” (2012–2013). Sara Rolando declares no conflicts of interest. Matilda Hellman declares no conflicts of interest. Michal Bujalski declares no conflict of interest. Paul Lemmens is an associate professor at the University of Maastricht. Most of the funds he received were of academic origin or health NGO (Dutch Heart Foundation). In the distant past, two research projects have been sponsored by STIVA (industry-funded), and collaborated in a discussion meeting organized and sponsored by ICAP (industry-funded). Currently, and for this project, he declares no conflict of interest. This research received funding from the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013), under Grant Agreement no. 266813–Addictions and Lifestyles in Contemporary Europe–Reframing Addictions Project (ALICE RAP). Participant organizations in ALICE RAP can be seen at http://www.alicerap.eu/about-alice-rap/partners.html.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We would like to extend our warmest thanks to Mieke Derickx, Maija Majamäki, Enrico Petrilli, Francesca Putzolu, and Sara Enrici Vaion for their accurate article collection, file management and coding. THE AUTHORS Franca Beccaria, Ph.D., is a Sociologist, partner in Eclectica, a research institute in Torino (Italy), contract Professor at the EMDAS, European Master on Drug and Alcohol Studies, the Avogadro University (Novara) and at the University of Torino. Her main research interests are alcohol and culture, drinking styles, prevention, and sociology of health. Last book edited “Alcohol and generation. Changes in style and changing styles in Italy and Finland” (Carocci, 2010), and “Alcol e giovani. Riflettere prima

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dell’uso” (Alcohol and youth. To think before using) has been publish in 2013 by Giunti Editore. Sara Rolando, MA., Sociologist, has been working as researcher in Eclectica (Torino) since 2007. She is involved in various national and international researches on alcohol, particularly on the topics of drinking culture and young people. Interested in comparative qualitative methods, she is Ph.D. student at the University of Helsinki.

Matilda Hellman, Ph.D., Docent (Adjunct Professor), sociology. Hellman is a researcher and research coordinator at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki. Her expertise comprise primarily: cultural and social aspects (perceptions definitions, images) of drinking, drug taking, and different addictive behaviors, as well as policy strategies to tackle lifestyle problems. She is affiliated at the University of Helsinki Centre for Research in Addiction, Control and Governance (CEACG).

Michal Bujalski, Ph.D., Sociologist and researcher in the Institute of Psychiatry and Neurology, Warsaw, Poland. His research interests stand at the intersection of sociology, cultural anthropology, and the public health perspective, covering issues of constructing the knowledge of substance use, with special emphasis on discourses of risk, modernity, and reflexivity of social actors.

Paul Lemmens, Ph.D., Associate Professor at Maastricht University, Department of Health Promotion. Interest in societal responses to alcohol and drugs use, and models of addiction. Published on public health issues, population models of alcohol use, risk assessments, methodological issues in survey research, and on portrayal of alcohol in the US print media.

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F. BECCARIA ET AL.

Newspaper texts (all accessed through electronic news archive)

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