Matilda Hellman
Biographic Data
| ID | 95939 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Matilda Hellman |
| GIVEN NAMES | Matilda |
| FAMILY NAME | Hellman |
| SIGNATURE | HELLMAN M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Helsinki |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8884-8601 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 11 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
A clarion call to the addiction science community: It's time to resist the anti-scientific policies of the US Trump administration
A Double Decline in Character”: A Grounded Theory Analysis of Female Drug User Experiences in Iran
Using a constructivist grounded theory design, this study explores the perception and experience of Iranian women living with drug use, identifying everyday conflicts and coping strategies that enable them to manage their situation. We conducted unstructured, in-depth interviews with abstinent drug users (11) and healthcare professionals (2) at three rehab centers in Tehran, Iran. In line with our grounded theory aspirations to explore the social…
Tripping in the Happiest Country of the World – Use Values of Psychedelics According to Finnish Users
Background The use of psychedelics is on the rise worldwide as more people are experimenting, self-medicating or seeking benefits from these substances. Aims This study explores the use values ascribed to classic psychedelics by 40 users in Finland – a country that scores high in welfare and happiness but has faced an increase in mental health problems and has adapted austerity policies in the public service sector. Methods The data consists of t…
Tampere casino: The last bizarre synergy between addiction capitalism and a state gambling monopoly
In the early 2020s, despite growing public concern about gambling harms, the Finnish city of Tampere hosted a state-monopoly-operated casino as part of a new entertainment arena complex. This study sheds light on the legitimisation of this project in terms of urban development and governance as well as a framing of gambling as appealing and socially acceptable. It explores the project's rationale through 10 interviews with city politicians, direc…
Accurate yet problematic: The divided sentiments regarding brain-based addiction by professionals in the Finnish service system
Background There is an ongoing debate regarding the value and applicability of brain-based understandings of addiction. This study examines how professionals in the Finnish addiction service system view this matter.Methods The study participants (n = 997) were recruited at different levels of policy-making, treatment, prevention work, education, administration and research. We created an online questionnaire containing both multiple-choice and op…
Flags, sports, and the common good: The nationalism that advances the gambling industry
This study investigates how nationalist sentiments enable the gambling industry to capitalize on national markets. With the help of qualitative content analytical tools, we analyzed 500 curated social media posts targeting Finnish and Swedish audiences. The study compared narrative templates, identifying speaker positions (inside/outside sociocultural context) and types of nationalist connotations (surface-level/in-depth). The results are display…
Being good while being bad: How does CSR-communication on the social media serve the gambling industry
Global businesses are known to use their social media accounts for legitimisation aspirations and national market assimilation. Still, we lack empirical tools for identifying the kind of public corporate social responsibility communication (CSRC) that helps along positive branding and social relevance. This is particularly important information in view of whitewashing aspirations by the vice industries. This study develops a content analytical to…
Governing Human Lives and Health in Pandemic Times: Social Control Policies
Self-exclusion from gambling: A toothless tiger
While there is evidence for self-exclusion (SE) as an individual-level harm reduction intervention, its effects on reducing harm from gambling at the population level remain unclear. Based on a review of national legal frameworks and SE programs, including their utilization and enforcement in selected high-income societies, the present analysis aims to explore the reach and strengths of SE in the protection of gamblers in these jurisdictions. It …
How is the Nordic welfare state doing? Contemporary public constructs on challenges and achievements
Public constructs of the welfare state are vital for the continuous assurance of the system’s validity, sustainability and accountability. This study produces descriptive cross-country snapshots of how the welfare state is construed in contemporary Danish, Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish mass media discourse as an object to relate to. The analysis shows that in Denmark a core question concerned the welfare state’s reliability and accountability to…
Associations between gambling severity and criminal convictions: Implications for the welfare state
This study addresses criminal convictions, social disadvantage and problem gambling as an interwoven set of problems. It makes use of data from a population-based gambling survey (n = 7,186) conducted in three Finnish regions. The survey data are combined with national registers to examine associations between sociodemographic factors and gambling severity, comparing persons with and without a criminal record. Gambling behavior included past-year…
Resilience and autonomy at stake: The public construct of the Paf gambling company in the Åland Islands community
The gambling business entails geo-economic opportunities for islands, especially in times of online gambling. However, it also involves risks like ill mental health, debt, and social problems. Furthermore, a heavy reliance on gambling revenues involves great moral dilemmas, especially when the gambling provision is operated within a not-for-profit public regime. This study concerns how these aspects are negotiated in the public discussion in Ålan…
Diversity in addiction publishing
Compromising the public good? Civil society as beneficiary of gambling revenue
Profits from legal gambling are often channelled to good causes. This system embeds the predicament of whether citizens’ potentially problematic gambling activities should be a source of funding for the public good. In this article, this dilemma is unfolded by the receivers of public grants that stem from gambling revenues. A total of twenty-three representatives of Civil Society Organizations were interviewed as beneficiaries of the Finnish stat…
The role of alcohol in baby boomers' biographical accounts
Gendered Citizen Constructs in Beer Commercials as a Metatext of Alcohol Control Policies
This study examines gender constructs in advertising in European beer commercials ( N = 59). It employs a lens of “citizenship” for discerning techniques by which male and female realms are portrayed as nonrelated, competing, and of unequal worth. This lens provides an explanation for why the connotations are problematic from a public health perspective. The citizenship-related tensions that the commercials entailed concerned taking the lead vers…
Declaring, shepherding, managing: The welfare state ethos in Finnish government programmes, 1950-2015
This study is concerned with the Finnish government’s political programmes (N=42) from the 1950s to the present. Its objective is to examine how conceptions of the welfare state have changed over the past 65 years. The analysis concentrates on the social and health care sectors as indicators of the content and nature of the ambitions set for the welfare system by the highest political leadership. The programmes were examined for their aims, chara…
Gambling policy studies: A field that is growing in size and complexity
Gambling policies take a variety of forms, and are concerned with many different kinds of gambling activities and situations. There is a growing need to produce knowledge about and govern specific
Construing oppositions, demarcating a we-ness: The dramaturgy of a live TV debate on the refugee crisis
This study concerns the dramaturgy of a 2-hour-long live televised debate by the Finnish public service broadcasting company YLE regarding how the country was to answer to increased numbers of asylum seekers in 2015. It provides insight into generic features of live TV discussions for articulating the refugee crisis as a national political concern. It unfolds a media construction ‘in the making’ identifying: (1) the positions that participants ar…
Just a joke. Psychogenesis of humor in alcohol advertisements
This article asks what psychic functions humorous alcohol advertisements employ and how they are connected to the wider cultural meanings of alcohol. The material comprises 27 advertisements televised in Europe in 2013. The material is primarily examined using Freud’s ideas regarding the psychogenesis of jokes. Freud’s conceptions of humor provide in-depth point of views to understand how the advertisements address the viewer’s mind. We recognize…
Present yet absent’: Negotiating commitment and intimacy in life with an excessive online role gamer
The study examines how persons in a close relationship with a gamer of massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG) perceive relationship problems caused by the gaming hobby. Revisiting the concept of pure relationships by Anthony Giddens, we analysed eight deep interviews with persons who claim their relationship with the gamer had ended or turned downhill due to the volume of the gaming. The study formulates a conception of the clas…
"When sense of time disappears"-Or does it? Online video gamers' time management and time apprehension
Massively multiplayer online role-playing games are graphical virtual environments in which gamers interact with each other through avatars many hours a day on a daily basis. The most widely accepted criterion of problematic variants of the gaming is the amount of time spent on the games. In this study, we show that time use might not be a very adequate measurement of the extent of the problem. We have analyzed an interview material with 17 (=n) …
What’s the story on addiction? Popular myths in the USA and Finland
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 …
A as in atmosphere, Z as in Zeitgeist: Trajectories in Helsinki dance club symbolism in the 1990s
The article gives insights into the evolution of the dance club scene in the growing urban region of the Finnish capital of Helsinki in the 1990s. The development of two different club cultures – techno and house – is accounted for. Techno culture was to a large degree made meaningful through the social change towards a computerized information society. Its popularity grew rapidly, but this was followed by a steep decline. In comparison, house cu…
Above the Message and Beyond Reach: Persuasion Knowledge By A European Teenage Beer Commercial Audience
The article accounts for qualitative knowledge on European adolescents’ (n=326) ad literacy, genre scepticism and persuasion knowledge as expressed in group discussions about televised beer commercials. Data was collected from six European countries: Denmark, Finland, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, and Poland. A general scepticism regarding the commercials’ tactics of persuasion dominated the material as a whole. There were no significant cross-cou…
"When sense of time disappears"-Or does it? Online video gamers' time management and time apprehension
Massively multiplayer online role-playing games are graphical virtual environments in which gamers interact with each other through avatars many hours a day on a daily basis. The most widely accepted criterion of problematic variants of the gaming is the amount of time spent on the games. In this study, we show that time use might not be a very adequate measurement of the extent of the problem. We have analyzed an interview material with 17 (=n) …
Construing oppositions, demarcating a we-ness: The dramaturgy of a live TV debate on the refugee crisis
This study concerns the dramaturgy of a 2-hour-long live televised debate by the Finnish public service broadcasting company YLE regarding how the country was to answer to increased numbers of asylum seekers in 2015. It provides insight into generic features of live TV discussions for articulating the refugee crisis as a national political concern. It unfolds a media construction ‘in the making’ identifying: (1) the positions that participants ar…
Present yet absent’: Negotiating commitment and intimacy in life with an excessive online role gamer
The study examines how persons in a close relationship with a gamer of massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG) perceive relationship problems caused by the gaming hobby. Revisiting the concept of pure relationships by Anthony Giddens, we analysed eight deep interviews with persons who claim their relationship with the gamer had ended or turned downhill due to the volume of the gaming. The study formulates a conception of the clas…
Tripping in the Happiest Country of the World – Use Values of Psychedelics According to Finnish Users
Background The use of psychedelics is on the rise worldwide as more people are experimenting, self-medicating or seeking benefits from these substances. Aims This study explores the use values ascribed to classic psychedelics by 40 users in Finland – a country that scores high in welfare and happiness but has faced an increase in mental health problems and has adapted austerity policies in the public service sector. Methods The data consists of t…
Resilience and autonomy at stake: The public construct of the Paf gambling company in the Åland Islands community
The gambling business entails geo-economic opportunities for islands, especially in times of online gambling. However, it also involves risks like ill mental health, debt, and social problems. Furthermore, a heavy reliance on gambling revenues involves great moral dilemmas, especially when the gambling provision is operated within a not-for-profit public regime. This study concerns how these aspects are negotiated in the public discussion in Ålan…
Compromising the public good? Civil society as beneficiary of gambling revenue
Profits from legal gambling are often channelled to good causes. This system embeds the predicament of whether citizens’ potentially problematic gambling activities should be a source of funding for the public good. In this article, this dilemma is unfolded by the receivers of public grants that stem from gambling revenues. A total of twenty-three representatives of Civil Society Organizations were interviewed as beneficiaries of the Finnish stat…
From myth of marginality to portrayals of an addictive society: Reporting on addictions in the Finnish press (1968–2006)
This study uses a systematically collected dataset to explore and discuss how the coverage of addiction has changed in Finland's biggest daily, Helsingin Sanomat, during the period 1968–2006. Newspaper texts have been collected through systematic reading of 432 issues (N = 432) from sampled weeks with the main aim of investigating some general trends in the addiction reporting over time. The study consists of two main parts. First, based on a sys…
Harm Caused by Different Beverage Types—A Recurring Question
This publication is one of two thematic journal issues produced by the project Trouble per liter - The effects of policies favoring lighter beverages. The project's origins date back to March 2007, when Nordic and Russian alcohol researchers met up for a research-based alcohol policy conference in Moscow. During the meeting it became evident that, from a Russian point of view, the historic Nordic drinking trend away from a domination of distilled…
A as in atmosphere, Z as in Zeitgeist: Trajectories in Helsinki dance club symbolism in the 1990s
The article gives insights into the evolution of the dance club scene in the growing urban region of the Finnish capital of Helsinki in the 1990s. The development of two different club cultures – techno and house – is accounted for. Techno culture was to a large degree made meaningful through the social change towards a computerized information society. Its popularity grew rapidly, but this was followed by a steep decline. In comparison, house cu…
Above the Message and Beyond Reach: Persuasion Knowledge By A European Teenage Beer Commercial Audience
The article accounts for qualitative knowledge on European adolescents’ (n=326) ad literacy, genre scepticism and persuasion knowledge as expressed in group discussions about televised beer commercials. Data was collected from six European countries: Denmark, Finland, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, and Poland. A general scepticism regarding the commercials’ tactics of persuasion dominated the material as a whole. There were no significant cross-cou…
What’s the story on addiction? Popular myths in the USA and Finland
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 …
Present yet absent’: Negotiating commitment and intimacy in life with an excessive online role gamer
The study examines how persons in a close relationship with a gamer of massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG) perceive relationship problems caused by the gaming hobby. Revisiting the concept of pure relationships by Anthony Giddens, we analysed eight deep interviews with persons who claim their relationship with the gamer had ended or turned downhill due to the volume of the gaming. The study formulates a conception of the clas…
"When sense of time disappears"-Or does it? Online video gamers' time management and time apprehension
Massively multiplayer online role-playing games are graphical virtual environments in which gamers interact with each other through avatars many hours a day on a daily basis. The most widely accepted criterion of problematic variants of the gaming is the amount of time spent on the games. In this study, we show that time use might not be a very adequate measurement of the extent of the problem. We have analyzed an interview material with 17 (=n) …
Declaring, shepherding, managing: The welfare state ethos in Finnish government programmes, 1950-2015
This study is concerned with the Finnish government’s political programmes (N=42) from the 1950s to the present. Its objective is to examine how conceptions of the welfare state have changed over the past 65 years. The analysis concentrates on the social and health care sectors as indicators of the content and nature of the ambitions set for the welfare system by the highest political leadership. The programmes were examined for their aims, chara…
Gambling policy studies: A field that is growing in size and complexity
Gambling policies take a variety of forms, and are concerned with many different kinds of gambling activities and situations. There is a growing need to produce knowledge about and govern specific
Construing oppositions, demarcating a we-ness: The dramaturgy of a live TV debate on the refugee crisis
This study concerns the dramaturgy of a 2-hour-long live televised debate by the Finnish public service broadcasting company YLE regarding how the country was to answer to increased numbers of asylum seekers in 2015. It provides insight into generic features of live TV discussions for articulating the refugee crisis as a national political concern. It unfolds a media construction ‘in the making’ identifying: (1) the positions that participants ar…
Just a joke. Psychogenesis of humor in alcohol advertisements
This article asks what psychic functions humorous alcohol advertisements employ and how they are connected to the wider cultural meanings of alcohol. The material comprises 27 advertisements televised in Europe in 2013. The material is primarily examined using Freud’s ideas regarding the psychogenesis of jokes. Freud’s conceptions of humor provide in-depth point of views to understand how the advertisements address the viewer’s mind. We recognize…
Compromising the public good? Civil society as beneficiary of gambling revenue
Profits from legal gambling are often channelled to good causes. This system embeds the predicament of whether citizens’ potentially problematic gambling activities should be a source of funding for the public good. In this article, this dilemma is unfolded by the receivers of public grants that stem from gambling revenues. A total of twenty-three representatives of Civil Society Organizations were interviewed as beneficiaries of the Finnish stat…
The role of alcohol in baby boomers' biographical accounts
Gendered Citizen Constructs in Beer Commercials as a Metatext of Alcohol Control Policies
This study examines gender constructs in advertising in European beer commercials ( N = 59). It employs a lens of “citizenship” for discerning techniques by which male and female realms are portrayed as nonrelated, competing, and of unequal worth. This lens provides an explanation for why the connotations are problematic from a public health perspective. The citizenship-related tensions that the commercials entailed concerned taking the lead vers…
Diversity in addiction publishing
How is the Nordic welfare state doing? Contemporary public constructs on challenges and achievements
Public constructs of the welfare state are vital for the continuous assurance of the system’s validity, sustainability and accountability. This study produces descriptive cross-country snapshots of how the welfare state is construed in contemporary Danish, Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish mass media discourse as an object to relate to. The analysis shows that in Denmark a core question concerned the welfare state’s reliability and accountability to…
Associations between gambling severity and criminal convictions: Implications for the welfare state
This study addresses criminal convictions, social disadvantage and problem gambling as an interwoven set of problems. It makes use of data from a population-based gambling survey (n = 7,186) conducted in three Finnish regions. The survey data are combined with national registers to examine associations between sociodemographic factors and gambling severity, comparing persons with and without a criminal record. Gambling behavior included past-year…
Resilience and autonomy at stake: The public construct of the Paf gambling company in the Åland Islands community
The gambling business entails geo-economic opportunities for islands, especially in times of online gambling. However, it also involves risks like ill mental health, debt, and social problems. Furthermore, a heavy reliance on gambling revenues involves great moral dilemmas, especially when the gambling provision is operated within a not-for-profit public regime. This study concerns how these aspects are negotiated in the public discussion in Ålan…
Governing Human Lives and Health in Pandemic Times: Social Control Policies
Self-exclusion from gambling: A toothless tiger
While there is evidence for self-exclusion (SE) as an individual-level harm reduction intervention, its effects on reducing harm from gambling at the population level remain unclear. Based on a review of national legal frameworks and SE programs, including their utilization and enforcement in selected high-income societies, the present analysis aims to explore the reach and strengths of SE in the protection of gamblers in these jurisdictions. It …
Being good while being bad: How does CSR-communication on the social media serve the gambling industry
Global businesses are known to use their social media accounts for legitimisation aspirations and national market assimilation. Still, we lack empirical tools for identifying the kind of public corporate social responsibility communication (CSRC) that helps along positive branding and social relevance. This is particularly important information in view of whitewashing aspirations by the vice industries. This study develops a content analytical to…
Accurate yet problematic: The divided sentiments regarding brain-based addiction by professionals in the Finnish service system
Background There is an ongoing debate regarding the value and applicability of brain-based understandings of addiction. This study examines how professionals in the Finnish addiction service system view this matter.Methods The study participants (n = 997) were recruited at different levels of policy-making, treatment, prevention work, education, administration and research. We created an online questionnaire containing both multiple-choice and op…
Flags, sports, and the common good: The nationalism that advances the gambling industry
This study investigates how nationalist sentiments enable the gambling industry to capitalize on national markets. With the help of qualitative content analytical tools, we analyzed 500 curated social media posts targeting Finnish and Swedish audiences. The study compared narrative templates, identifying speaker positions (inside/outside sociocultural context) and types of nationalist connotations (surface-level/in-depth). The results are display…
A clarion call to the addiction science community: It's time to resist the anti-scientific policies of the US Trump administration
A Double Decline in Character”: A Grounded Theory Analysis of Female Drug User Experiences in Iran
Using a constructivist grounded theory design, this study explores the perception and experience of Iranian women living with drug use, identifying everyday conflicts and coping strategies that enable them to manage their situation. We conducted unstructured, in-depth interviews with abstinent drug users (11) and healthcare professionals (2) at three rehab centers in Tehran, Iran. In line with our grounded theory aspirations to explore the social…
Political science (21 works) · Psychology (20 works) · Law (17 works) · Sociology (17 works) · Law (12 works) · Social Psychology (9 works) · Computer Science (8 works) · Economics (8 works) · Psychiatry (8 works) · Social science (8 works)