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INTRODUCTION: There is accumulating evidence for the effectiveness of mindfulness-based interventions in alleviating depressive symptoms. A crucial question is, however, whether mindfulness interventions are more effective for some individuals than others, depending on individual characteristics before a mindfulness intervention. We exploratorily investigated whether the effectiveness of school-based mindfulness intervention against depressive symptoms is modified by executive functions, rumination, and emotion regulation among adolescents. METHODS: The longitudinal data included adolescents with at least mild depressive symptoms at the baseline (n = 369, at the 6th-8th grade, 68.4% female) who were randomized into a 9-week school-based mindfulness intervention group, into an active control group receiving relaxation program, or into an inactive control group. Adolescents' executive functions, rumination, and emotion regulation (i.e., acceptance, catastrophizing, and positive reappraisal) were assessed at the baseline; and depressive symptoms at three time points (at the baseline and at 9-week and 6-month follow-ups). RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: In adolescents with at least mild depressive symptoms at the baseline, high catastrophizing, high acceptance, and low executive functions were found to increase the effectiveness of mindfulness-based intervention against depressive symptoms. There seemed to be some sex differences. Thus, when aiming to alleviate depressive symptoms, mindfulness-based intervention may possibly be more effective for adolescents with high catastrophizing, high acceptance, and low executive functioning (than for adolescents with the opposite dispositions). However, as this study was exploratory by nature and corrections for multiple testing were not used, the findings must be regarded as preliminary and need confirmation in further studies. publishedVersion

We used a novel interdisciplinary experimental paradigm where two types of dyads—15 dyads with one depressed and one non-depressed participant and 15 dyads with two non-depressed participants—engaged in a series of food-decision-making tasks. We examined how different communicative events during the decision-making process were reflected in the affective responses of the interacting participants, as indicated in their skin conductance (SC) response rates. The participants’ SC response rates were found to be higher during the emergence of the final decision, compared to the other segments during the process. Furthermore, relinquishing one’s initially expressed preferences was associated with SC response rates higher than the baseline. However, during the relinquishment segments, there was a negative interaction between depression diagnosis and SC response rates, which suggests that, compared to their non-depressed comparisons, it is affectively less arousing for the participants with depression to give up their previously expressed preferences. publishedVersion

Background Visiting a close relative who resides in a nursing home is an opportunity for family members to extend their caring roles and find reassurance that the older person’s life is continuing as well as possible. At the same time, visits allow family members to observe the quality of formal care in the facility. In Finland, the COVID-19 pandemic led to the imposition of visiting bans in nursing homes in March 2020, thereby preventing customary interaction between residents and their family members. The aim of this study is to investigate family members’ experiences of the visiting ban and its effects on their concern over the wellbeing of close relatives living in nursing homes. Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted to explore family members’ self-reported concerns and the factors associated with those concerns. In the context of this unpredictable pandemic, this was considered an appropriate approach, as information at the very beginning of the visiting ban was sought, and causal relations were not investigated. The data consist of a quantitative survey (n = 366) conducted among family members in May–June 2020. Binary logistic regression analyses were performed to explore the association between the independent variables and reported concern. Results The results showed that increased concern was extremely common (79%). The factors associated with this notable increase were adequacy of contact and information, observations of changes in the wellbeing of the relative in question, and doubts over the appropriateness of the visiting restriction. Conclusions In light of the findings, care providers should improve their information provision to residents’ family members and find new ways of allowing visits to nursing homes in the future in all circumstances.

During COVID-19, telework has become a new form of work for broader groups of workers who were not teleworking prior to the pandemic. In this study, we ask what we will be returning to after COVID-19, if teleworking will become a new norm or if most workplaces will merely return to the old forms of work. The main research question of this study was to estimate the role of telework in perception of workload. More specifically, to gain an understanding of the stakes involved when reorganizing work after the pandemic, we analysed the relationship between perceived workload and opportunities to telework. Multilevel analysis utilized representative national data of wage earners in Finland (N = 4091). The findings showed that the opportunity to telework is associated with lower perceived workload in the capital area but not in the rural areas. More specifically, increasing telework opportunities among different-level workers, particularly in educational and social work in the capital area, would be beneficial in terms of increasing well-being at work. There could be good reasons for organizations to reject returning to the status quo ex ante after COVID-19 and to consider the new norm, where opportunities to telework are offered to wider worker groups. acceptedVersion

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BackgroundDepression is associated with an increased dementia risk, but the nature of the association in the long-term remains unresolved, and the role of sociodemographic factors mainly unexplored.AimsTo assess whether a history of clinical depression is associated with dementia in later life, controlling for observed sociodemographic factors and unobserved factors shared by siblings, and to test whether gender, educational level and marital status modify the association.MethodWe conducted a national cohort study of 1 616 321 individuals aged 65 years or older between 2001 and 2018 using administrative healthcare data. A history of depression was ascertained from the national hospital register in the period 15–30 years prior to dementia follow-up. We used conventional and sibling fixed-effects Cox regression models to analyse the association between a history of depression, sociodemographic factors and dementia.ResultsA history of depression was related to an adjusted hazard ratio of 1.27 (95% CI 1.23–1.31) for dementia in the conventional Cox model and of 1.55 (95% CI 1.09–2.20) in the sibling fixed-effects model. Depression was related to an elevated dementia risk similarly across all levels of education (test for interaction, P = 0.84), but the association was weaker for the widowed than for the married (P = 0.003), and stronger for men than women (P = 0.006). The excess risk among men attenuated following covariate adjustment (P = 0.10).DiscussionThis study shows that a history of depression is consistently associated with later-life dementia risk. The results support the hypothesis that depression is an aetiological risk factor for dementia.

Background Symptoms of depression and anxiety are elevated among parents of children with cancer. However, knowledge of parents' psychotropic medication use following child's cancer diagnosis is scarce. Methods We use longitudinal Finnish register data on 3266 mothers and 2687 fathers whose child (aged 0-19) was diagnosed with cancer during 2000-2016. We record mothers' and fathers' psychotropic medication use (at least one annual purchase of anxiolytics, hypnotics, sedatives, or antidepressants) 5 years before and after the child's diagnosis and assess within-individual changes in medication use by time since diagnosis, cancer type, child's age, presence of siblings, and parent's living arrangements and education using linear probability models with the individual fixed-effects estimator. The fixed-effects models compare each parent's annual probability of psychotropic medication use after diagnosis to their annual probability of medication use during the 5-year period before the diagnosis. Results Psychotropic medication use was more common among mothers than fathers already before the child's diagnosis, 11.2% versus 7.3%. Immediately after diagnosis, psychotropic medication use increased by 6.0 (95% CI 4.8-7.2) percentage points among mothers and by 3.2 (CI 2.1-4.2) percentage points among fathers. Among fathers, medication use returned to pre-diagnosis level by the second year, except among those whose child was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia or lymphoblastic lymphoma. Among mothers of children with a central nervous system cancer, medication use remained persistently elevated during the 5-year follow-up. For mothers with other under-aged children or whose diagnosed child was younger than 10 years, the return to pre-diagnosis level was also slow. Conclusions Having a child with cancer clearly increases parents' psychotropic medication use. The increase is smaller and more short-lived among fathers, but among mothers its duration depends on both cancer type and family characteristics. Our results suggest that an increased care burden poses particular strain to the long-term mental well-being of mothers.

Electronic gambling machines (EGMs) are among the most harmful forms of gambling. The structural characteristics of EGMs prolong and reinforce gambling similarly to other habit-forming technologies. In Finland, the wide availability of EGMs in non-casino locations is likely to further reinforce the habit-creating nature of gambling offer by incorporating EGMs into everyday practices. The COVID-19 pandemic changed the landscape of gambling in Finland. The most visible change was the closure of land-based EGMs in non-casino environments, arcades, and the casino in March 2020. Since then, the status of EGMs has varied depending on the pandemic situation. The current qualitative study focuses on how Finnish past-year gamblers experience prolonged EGM closures and occasional re-openings 1 year into the pandemic. The data consist of responses to an online questionnaire eliciting experiences (N = 187) as well as interviews (N = 27, conducted in groups or alone). To aid our analysis, we employ the sociological pragmatist theory of the concept of "habit." The analysis focuses on gambler experiences on EGM shutdowns and re-openings, and views on whether closures have contributed to abstaining from gambling or to shifting to other gambling products. Policy implications of the results are discussed.

We introduce in this chapter discourse analysis as a methodological tool for studying work-family issues, particularly those of men and fathers in work and care. Work and family involve complex processes and dynamics, where reconciling different interpretations of events are temporally and contextually changing. Current discourses on involved fatherhood raise many questions about men's work and family relationships and the role of care in their life. Here we present two empirical examples using discourse analysis to study work-family issues from a male gender perspective in the Finnish context. Finally, we discuss the (dis)advantages of using discursive analytical perspectives in work-family research.

Health psychology is at the forefront of developing and disseminating evidence, theories, and methods that have improved the understanding of health behaviour change. However, current dissemination approaches may be insufficient for promoting broader application and impact of this evidence to benefit the health of patients and the public. Nevertheless, behaviour change theory/methods typically directed towards health behaviours are now used in implementation science to understand and support behaviour change in individuals at different health system levels whose own behaviour impacts delivering evidence-based health behaviour change interventions. Despite contributing to implementation science, health psychology is perhaps doing less to draw from it. A redoubled focus on implementation science in health psychology could provide novel prospects for enhancing the impact of health behaviour change evidence. We report a Health Psychology Review-specific review-of-reviews of trials of health behaviour change interventions published from inception to April 2020. We identified 34 reviews and assessed whether implementation readiness of behaviour change interventions was discussed. We then narratively review how implementation science has integrated theory/methods from health psychology and related discipline. Finally, we demonstrate how greater synergy between implementation science and health psychology could promote greater follow-through on advances made in the science of health behaviour change. publishedVersion

Using both statistical methods and conversation analysis, we examined how support workers in a mental health rehabilitation community encourage clients to participate in joint decision-making processes. Drawing on video-recordings of 29 community meetings as data, we considered support workers’ proposals (N = 449) and clients’ responsiveness to them. Support workers’ proposals were coded for their linguistic and other features and clients’ responsiveness was assessed by three independent raters. Multiple linear regression (MLR) analysis was carried out. A significant regression equation with seven predictor variables accounted for 24% of the variance in the data. Four variables predicted a higher level of client responsiveness: the use of explicit recipient address term, “quasi open” proposal form, support worker’s long work experience, and the average level of client participation during a session. Three variables predicted a lower level of client responsiveness: grammatical complexity of proposal form, modal declarative proposal form, and the presence of only one support worker in a session. The qualitative conversation-analytic investigation highlighted the advantages of the careful fine-tuning of openness vs. closedness of proposal form, the reflexive awareness of which, we argue, may help mental health professionals to encourage clients’ responsiveness in joint decision-making processes and thereby their participation in communal life. Using both statistical methods and conversation analysis, we examined how support workers in a mental health rehabilitation community encourage clients to participate in joint decision-making processes. Drawing on video-recordings of 29 community meetings as data, we considered support workers’ proposals (N = 449) and clients’ responsiveness to them. Support workers’ proposals were coded for their linguistic and other features and clients’ responsiveness was assessed by three independent raters. Multiple linear regression (MLR) analysis was carried out. A significant regression equation with seven predictor variables accounted for 24% of the variance in the data. Four variables predicted a higher level of client responsiveness: the use of explicit recipient address term, “quasi-open” proposal form, support worker’s long work experience, and the average level of client participation during a session. Three variables predicted a lower level of client responsiveness: grammatical complexity of proposal form, modal declarative proposal form, and the presence of only one support worker in a session. The qualitative conversation-analytic investigation highlighted the advantages of the careful fine-tuning of openness vs. closedness of proposal form, the reflexive awareness of which, we argue, may help mental health professionals to encourage clients’ responsiveness in joint decision-making processes and thereby their participation in communal life.

Introduction: The aim was to analyse whether age at first drug offense predicts premature mortality and morbidity due to substance use and violence among adolescents and young adults. Methods: A prospective longitudinal register-linkage study based on a total population sample from Finland including individuals born between 1987 and 1992 and aged 15–25 years during follow-up in 2002–2017 (n = 386 435). Age-specific rates of deaths and health-care admissions (morbidity) during a 5-year follow-up were calculated from the first drug offense. Cox regression models were used to estimate differences in mortality and morbidity at ages 21–25. Results: Of all 15- to 20-year-olds, 1.4% (n = 5540) have had a police contact. The 5-year mortality rates (per 1000 person-years) among those with first drug offense at ages 15–16 was 2.92 [95% confidence interval (CI) 1.56–6.18], and 5.26 (CI 4.00–7.07) and 5.05 (CI 4.06–6.38) at ages 17–18, and 19–20, respectively. The rates of morbidity varied between 61.20 (CI 52.43–71.76) and 87.51 (CI 82.11–93.33). Both mortality and morbidity rates were over 10 times higher than among the general population. In models adjusted for family background, first police contact at an early age (15–16) did not increase the risk of mortality at ages 21–25 compared with first police contact at ages 17–18 (hazard ratio 1.55, CI 0.77–3.09) or 19–20 (hazard ratio 1.52, CI 0.78–2.98). The results were similar for morbidity. Discussion and Conclusions: Adolescents with drug-related police contacts have high risk of mortality and morbidity due to substance use and violence regardless of age of first contact. publishedVersion

Finnish governments have utilised a ‘stick and carrot’ approach to prolong work careers at the end by both increasing the official retirement age and offering financial incentives for people to work longer. This chapter explores Finnish male metalworkers’ and engineers’ thoughts regarding retirement and prolonging their careers in terms of how men’s motives change as they approach retirement age. Our interviews (conducted in 2010/2011 and 2017) indicated in both groups that the men had lost a great deal of their interest in work and most of them were ready to retire. Rather than focusing on their work ability, both metalworkers and engineers considered it important to secure sufficient health for life in retirement. Quite surprisingly, economic incentives did not seem to play a role in these men’s considerations of retirement in either of the groups, even despite the substantial income differences between them. Instead of additional money, the interviewees thought about their retirement plans in terms of health, mental wellbeing and work-related satisfaction. Our study suggests that future efforts to prolong work careers should therefore focus on improving working conditions and age-friendly work environments.

European Parliament’s political groups are unique conglomerates of national party delegations formed after elections every five years. In this chapter, we develop a novel framework of four layers of political group formation and show that pervasive informal practices and norms in addition to the formal rules of the European Parliament (EP) shape political group formation processes. The four intertwined layers are characterised by differing democratic practices and encompass: (1) formal political group formation after EP elections, (2) internal political group formation via core functions, (3) internal political group formation via consolidation through policies and distributing policy field responsibilities and (4) changes to political group composition during the term. We draw on a unique set of 132 interviews with MEPs, political group and parliamentary staff conducted in 2018–2020 in the 8th and 9th EP. The findings show that there are similarities but also clear differences between political groups in relation to each of the four layers, which enhances our understanding of variations in negotiating power and democracy in the different political groups.

In this introductory chapter Katajala-Peltomaa & Toivo analyse historiographical changes from the history of popular religion to the history of religion as lived. They lay out the framework and discuss the tradition of studying the history of experience and religion as a cultural and time-bound phenomenon. The chapter introduces three analytical levels, namely everyday experience, experience as a process and experience as a social and societal structure arguing for a situational nature of experience. The three levels of experience are approached via the concepts of cultural scripts, communities, embodiment, materiality and agency. Finally, the introduction explains the structure of the rest of the volume.

Ethnography is still relatively unknown, not just to parliamentary interlocutors, but also to some political scientists. In this chapter, I ask: what does ethnography add to existing qualitative research on the political groups of the European Parliament, more specifically on the substantive themes of the book: democracy, party politics and turbulent times? Secondly, drawing on the chapter’s title, I offer a practical illustration of how ethnography might be conducted of the political groups and elucidate the practices and challenges that this entails. The chapter is based upon my ethnographic research conducted in the 8th and 9th European Parliaments. I introduce shadowing, meeting ethnography and ‘hanging out’ as three ethnographic practices and assess their helpfulness for studying different political group activities. Overall, I present parliamentary ethnography as not only affording practical benefits to researchers, but also how it provides unparalleled knowledge about entanglements and relationships between political group actors and institutions.

On 26 September 2021, Germans elected the 20th Bundestag. This election was special in many ways. The article analyses the electoral campaign, voting behaviour, turnout, and the formation of a new coalition government by using a gender and intersectional lens. Against the conceptual background of descriptive, substantive, and symbolic representation, we outline the implications of the election for gender and intersectional politics in the new German Bundestag and the government. In descriptive and symbolic terms, we find higher numbers of women (and of minorities) in the Bundestag and its leadership as well as in government; in substantive terms, we observe the presence of ‘critical actors’ and the commitment to progressive politics in the new ‘Ampel’ coalition. Hence, we see at least a chance for change in several key policy areas and social progress in the next 4 years. publishedVersion

Against the background of the European Parliament (EP) operating in a polycrisis, we review the chapters of the edited volume and their innovative inroads into studying EP’s political groups and their multiple functions, powers and practices. In this concluding chapter, we pay specific attention to the role of Euroscepticism, political groups as democratic actors and the formal and informal institutions of the political groups. By comparing the book chapters, we draw overarching lessons on continuity and change in the policy- and decision-making between and within the political groups. This chapter closes by discussing political groups in the broader context of European integration and the new research avenues that can be pursued to further deepen our understanding of the political groups.

During the past decade, digital platforms like Airbnb and Uber have enabled the development of a new generation of entrepreneurs in tourism and mobility. The mediation of services through digital platforms was initially presented as a form of a sharing economy led by non-professional providers, but it has grown into a new form of capitalist speculation. This special issue presents theoretical and empirical perspectives on platform-mediated tourism by focusing on Airbnb, which is the most notable digital platform specialising in short-term property rental. The case studies included in this issue show that the impacts of short-term renting on neighbourhoods, residents and tourism operators are uneven, but increasingly significant. The authors explore issues of social justice in terms of residents' quality of life, working conditions, the housing market, urban structure, and the morality of operators who navigate through normative loopholes. They also examine the governance challenges caused by the inadequacy of existing legal frameworks to better regulate platform-mediated activities, and the reactions generated by social movements and city governments. With the outbreak of Covid-19, networks of cities are taking action against platforms to regain their control over data that is needed to regulate platform-mediated tourism services.

Wine from grapes is both ancient and highly modern, increasingly widespread across vast swathes of the planet, and made, marketed and distributed by a huge industry that directly and indirectly employs millions of people and generates huge profits, at least for some. Yet despite wine’s social and cultural importance, sociology and sociologists have remained remarkably quiet about wine, unlike those in other academic disciplines. There is today no such thing as a scholarly field called the sociology of wine. This introductory paper to the special issue on wine and sociology considers this state of affairs, and what might be done about overcoming the relative silence of sociology on wine matters. It offers an extensive literature review covering what international sociological work there is on the wine/sociology interface, considering this relatively modest body of literature in relation to the more voluminous amounts of wine-related analysis offered by anthropologists, geographers, economists, and others. These scholarly domains are represented in the paper by reference to classic works and indicative readings. The paper poses a series of questions as to what a sociological field of wine analysis could look like, and what it would take to build such a thing. It also illustrates how the papers published in the special issue contribute to posing and answering some of these questions.

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Most objects show high degrees of spatial regularity (e.g. beach umbrellas appear above, not under, beach chairs). The spatial regularities of real-world objects benefit visual working memory (VWM), but the mechanisms behind this spatial regularity effect remain unclear. The "encoding specificity" hypothesis suggests that spatial regularity will enhance the visual encoding process but will not facilitate the integration of information online during VWM maintenance. The "perception-alike" hypothesis suggests that spatial regularity will function in both visual encoding and online integration during VWM maintenance. We investigated whether VWM integrates sequentially presented real-world objects by focusing on the existence of the spatial regularity effect. Throughout five experiments, we manipulated the presentation (simultaneous vs. sequential) and regularity (with vs. without regularity) of memory arrays among pairs of real-world objects. The spatial regularity of memory objects presented simultaneously, but not sequentially, improved VWM performance. We also examined whether memory load, verbal suppression and masking, and memory array duration hindered the spatial regularity effect in sequential presentation. We found a stable absence of the spatial regularity effect, suggesting that the participants were unable to integrate real-world objects based on spatial regularities online. Our results support the encoding specificity hypothesis, wherein the spatial regularity of real-world objects can enhance the efficiency of VWM encoding, but VWM cannot exploit spatial regularity to help organize sampled sequential information into meaningful integrations. publishedVersion

The European Union is facing a crisis of care due to demographic shifts, policies aimed at driving up women’s employment while cutting state care expenditures, and marketizing public care provisions. This article combines feminist political economy approaches to reproductive labor as an essential part of the economy with theories of care ethics to explore the European Union’s role in deepening this crisis. It concludes that the European Union fails to recognize the importance of care or address it holistically and is more preoccupied with the potential impact on public finances than finding a solution to the care crisis.

Funder: Research Council of Norway through its Centres of Excellence Scheme, FAIR project No 262675, Funder: J. William Fulbright Program, Funder: Institute for Lifecourse Development, University of Greenwich, Funder: Economic Social Research Council Impact Acceleration Award, University of Oxford, Funder: Institute of Social Sciences Ivo Pilar, Funder: Academy of Finland (Suomen Akatemia); doi: https://doi.org/10.13039/501100002341, Funder: Universität Wien (University of Vienna); doi: https://doi.org/10.13039/501100003065, Funder: Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan (Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan); doi: https://doi.org/10.13039/501100004663, Funder: NOMIS Stiftung (NOMIS Foundation); doi: https://doi.org/10.13039/501100008483, Funder: Princeton Graduate Student Research Funding (Program in Cognitive Science), Funder: Corruption Laboratory on Ethics, Accountability, and the Rule of Law (CLEAR), University of Virginia, Funder: Project Pro.Co.P.E., IMT School (PAI2019), Funder: Italian Ministry of University and Research - PRIN 2017 (20178293XT), Funder: Gouvernement du Canada | Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (Conseil de Recherches en Sciences Naturelles et en Génie du Canada); doi: https://doi.org/10.13039/501100000038, Funder: Australian Research Council (DP180102384), Funder: Ernst and Young (EY); doi: https://doi.org/10.13039/501100003064, Changing collective behaviour and supporting non-pharmaceutical interventions is an important component in mitigating virus transmission during a pandemic. In a large international collaboration (Study 1, N = 49,968 across 67 countries), we investigated self-reported factors associated with public health behaviours (e.g., spatial distancing and stricter hygiene) and endorsed public policy interventions (e.g., closing bars and restaurants) during the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic (April-May 2020). Respondents who reported identifying more strongly with their nation consistently reported greater engagement in public health behaviours and support for public health policies. Results were similar for representative and non-representative national samples. Study 2 (N = 42 countries) conceptually replicated the central finding using aggregate indices of national identity (obtained using the World Values Survey) and a measure of actual behaviour change during the pandemic (obtained from Google mobility reports). Higher levels of national identification prior to the pandemic predicted lower mobility during the early stage of the pandemic (r = −0.40). We discuss the potential implications of links between national identity, leadership, and public health for managing COVID-19 and future pandemics.

Nation states often end up adopting practices that are incongruent with their formal commitments to international efforts, such as mitigation of climate change. Although the necessity of a transfer towards carbon-neutral societies is widely understood, such decoupling is a challenge to transition. This study analyses the political discourse in the Finnish media from 2017 to 2018 around the European Union's Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) Regulation. The discourse embodies a contradiction, as the Finnish government sought to justify its aim to log a record amount of forest while officially pledging to climate change mitigation. The forest industry and the government launched a major lobbying campaign to influence the regulation calculations to be adopted by the European Union. Several representatives of the scientific community rose to oppose the government's plan of action by distributing scientific knowledge on the negative climate effects caused by extensive forestry; a vigorous public debate around the correct ways to use this natural resource ensued. Our analysis identifies three prevailing narratives, each portraying and resolving the contradiction in a distinct way. We argue that narratives work as tools of epistemic governance and demonstrate how policy actors selectively weave scientific knowledge into such narratives. publishedVersion

Although cognitive and physical impairments often co-occur in older individuals, they are typically studied as separate outcomes. Using the Health and Retirement Study (1998-2016) and multistate models, we quantify the population burden of their co-occurrence (joint impairment) using two key indicators- lifetime risk and expectancy, by gender, race/ethnicity/nativity, education and their interactions for Americans aged 50 and over. Furthermore, we analyze what fraction of the racial/ethnic inequalities in joint impairment is attributable to inequalities in educational attainment. Results reveal that 58% of women and 42% of men aged 50 are predicted to experience joint impairment in their remaining life expectancy. Women also live longer in joint impairment than men (3.4 vs 1.9 years). Foreign-born Latinas have 83% lifetime risk compared with Whites’ 52% and three times more jointly impaired years. Lower educated men experience 32 percentage points higher lifetime risk and three times more joint impairment years than higher educated men. The lowest educated Blacks and Latinx carry the greatest joint impairment burden. This study emphasizes the importance of considering cognitive and physical impairment simultaneously in assessing older-age disability. The finding that up to 74% of the racial/ethnic disparities are attributable to inequalities in educational attainment can inform policy.

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The turbulent times the European Union witnessed over the last years together with the increased competences for the European Parliament call for closer examination of political groups as core actors in this setting. In this introductory chapter, we engage with political groups as unique alliances of national party delegations and the context they operate in. We first discuss the core features of the political groups and then proceed to present new inroads into studying their functions, work and practices. By engaging with broader questions of democracy and what political groups research can contribute, we suggest that theorising the democratic functioning within the EP allows casting a critical eye on democratic practices and the growing salience of the political groups. The chapter closes by introducing the chapters of the volume which provide new insights into the practices of political groups, the dynamics and power relations between them and, thus, decision-making and policy-making in the European Parliament.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been the most mediatised health crisis in human history, involving a rapid circulation of knowledge in global networks and a continuous flow of spectacular images and narratives that have rendered the pandemic graspable in cultural, political, and moral terms. This article proposes that the intertwined nature of two opposite trends of knowledge production – scientific reasoning and affective storytelling – can be analytically approached through the concept of ‘outformation’ that provides explanatory power and conceptual clarity to make sense of the disorderly flows of knowledge in the pandemic-era. Using frame analysis, the article examines how one key term of the pandemic era, herd immunity, is taken from its scientific context and mobilised across different epistemic arenas from journalistic media to parliamentary debates as a vehicle for mistrust towards political and expert authorities in Finland that is a country characterised by high levels of trust towards authorities. The Finnish case is not only a national case about the framing of a specific term in times of epistemic instability but also provides a valuable lens to knowledge production during the pandemic era.

PurposeThis article aims to study digital competence (DC) in media work.Design/methodology/approachThe authors utilize frame analysis to investigate how DC is framed in media work using 30 semi-structured interviews as data with journalists in Finland.FindingsThe authors identify three main frames of DC in the context of media work. The individual attitude frame emphasizes employees' attitudes toward DC, the team-level support frame underlines the need for support in the work community and the organizational-level practice frame highlights enablers of and organizations' requirements for digital competence.Practical implicationsFirst, media workers' DC is necessary to enhance work efficiency and accomplish tasks and may be supported with supportive management practices. Second, the findings suggest that DC should be understood and analyzed as a multi-level issue. Third, the findings suggest that appropriate continuing education and study opportunities were needed. Besides formal arrangements for learning, informal contexts of learning are important.Originality/valueThe article contributes to media studies and studies on the digitalization of work by taking account of the organizational, team and individual levels in discussing digital competence in the news media sector.

A lectio præcursoria is a short presentation read out loud by a doctoral candidate at the start of a public thesis examination in Finland. It introduces the key points or central argument of the thesis in a way that should make the ensuing discussion between the examinee and the examiner apprehensible to the audience, many of whom may be unfamiliar with the candidate's research or even anthropological research in general. publishedVersion Non

Client participation is not only about deciding on one's own treatment, but it may also be conceived more generally as the right of the client to influence the planning and development of social and health care services. In this paper, we examine participants' rights to control and influence action in workshops in which social and health care professionals and clients co-develop the social and health care services provided by their municipality. Drawing on conversation analysis as a method, we investigate the interwovenness of the participants' rights to control interaction in the encounter (proximal deontic rights) and their right to decide about those future actions that can have concrete health consequences for them (distal deontic rights). Maintaining that it is the clients' distal deontic rights that underlie the motivation and legitimacy for their participation in the co-development workshops, we ask about the extent to which the clients' distal deontic rights are underpinned and constrained by who has the proximal deontic rights in the situation. The data set involves both face-to-face and online workshops. Our analysis shows that, in the face-to-face workshops, the agenda management by professionals involved control over both proximal and distal action. In the online workshops, the professionals seemed to have technical difficulties that momentarily disrupted the fluency of interaction. Despite these problems, which in principle might have given the clients more space to participate, this did not seem to happen. In contrast, the clients had great difficulties managing the interactional agenda, losing control over both proximal and distal action. Promoting ethical and more balanced client participation in the co-development processes in the future necessitates heightened awareness of the nuanced practices of interaction by which power imbalances are realized. publishedVersion

This article explores how social media presence and platform engagements inform and affect creative workers’ sense of professional agency and craft. Focusing on Finnish theatre, film and TV actors’ perceptions of their social media interactions, the article proposes the concept of platformed intimacy to capture the simultaneous importance and ambivalence of mobile attachments that characterise actors’ platformed lives. The research participants consisted of 15 freelancers and theatre employees, aged between 29 and 64 years. The analysis was based on the diary-interview method and close reading. In this article, we suggest that to understand the complexities involved in creative workers’ presence on social media platforms, it is important to broaden the investigation from self-promotion to questions of professional identities and communities. The concept of platformed intimacy captures how actors experience social network sites and apps, such as Instagram and Facebook, as ‘grey areas’ in which they deal with the frequent uncertainty about the meaning of social media visibility for their employability and future collaborations. For actors in our study, social media presence is intimately entangled with their sense of professionalism and desire of to belong to a professional community of peers. As such it articulates senses of proximity and reciprocity as well as feelings of discomfort and anxiety. publishedVersion

This article proposes a pragmatist theorising of different repertoires of valuation as an analytical grid to understand how actors of participatory projects assess the value of citizen expert participation. It conducts justification analysis on interview data from 21 projects that engage citizens as lay experts in Finland to illustrate how this analytical approach helps explain the contradicting meanings assigned to the concept as well as the resulting possibilities for participation. The article identifies two main conflicts in which different justifications for citizen expertise become explicit: debates over who can be a citizen expert and what the scope of their participation should be. Our results show how in the Finnish context, industrial justifications are often used to bolster claims for the right to participate. However, the industrial value-base is also the most reoccurring object of critique, suggested to create a narrow and above-defined role of a citizen-engineer for the citizen experts. The article illustrates how the diverse justifications might lead to contradicting constructions of citizen expertise, contributing to conflicting expectations, ambiguous and tokenistic participation, and feelings of exclusion among policy actors. It argues for justification analysis as a tool to identify and compare these undergirding valuations across policy fields and contexts.

This article outlines a first attempt at analysing counter-media publishing through the lens of remix theory. We concentrate on two key concepts—appropriation and authorship—which have a permanent standing in the remix research literature. To support our theoretical analysis, we investigate the coverage of two cases in the Finnish right-wing counter-media online publication MV-lehti. Our findings enable new readings on the nature of both counter-media work and remix culture. In fact, counter-media publishing leans more in the direction of remix culture—which is based on the act of using pre-existing materials to produce something new—than towards traditional journalistic convention, with its rules and ethical guidelines. MV-lehti’s practice of combining and layering different material is discernibly political, often resembling media activism. Our study provides the argument that counter to the utopian democratising assumptions of remix culture, the proliferation of remix practices has also given antidemocratic actors the means to challenge collectively and institutionally supported ideas of knowledge and justice. Counter-media publishing is perhaps democratising in that it offers the means to participate, but these antagonistic actors also remix news to undermine liberal-democratic ideals and social justice. Evidently, remix practices can be co-opted for a reactionary agenda.

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This article examines national responses to the introduction of a strong policy coordination tool by the European Commission: the European Semester. The tool was introduced in 2012 in reaction to the economic crisis to prevent unsustainable policy choices within EMU. It sets annual country-specific recommendations for economic policies, which the Member States are expected to implement when drafting national budgets. We study the uptake of the policy tool in three disparate Member States: Finland, Spain and France in 2013. The article explores how national parliaments tackle the challenge imposed on national sovereignty by the powerful tool. We investigate the discursive practices and justifications evinced by national politicians on policy proposal in the parliamentary debate on annual state budget. Politicians balance between contrastive normative frameworks by operating on evasive discursive formulations and performative silences, which point to a deafened legitimation work and double commitment within the multilevel polity of the EU. info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

Nuancing Young Masculinities tells a complex story about the plurality of young masculinities. It draws on the narratives of Finnish young people (mostly boys) of different social classes and ethnicities who attend schools in Helsinki, Finland. Their accounts of relations with peers, parents, and teachers give insights into boys’ experiences and everyday practices at school, home, and in leisure time. The theoretical insights in this volume are wide-ranging, illuminating the plurality of masculinities, their dynamism, and intersections with other social identities. The young people’s enthusiastic and reflexive engagement with the research dispels stereotypes of boys and masculinities and offers a unique and holistic re-imagining of masculinities. Nuancing Young Masculinities provides a nuanced and compelling understanding of young masculinities. Vertaisarvioitu peerReviewed

Background: The uncertain and stressful global situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has the potential to cause anxiety and impact people's mental health. Simultaneously, social distancing policies have isolated people from their normal social interactions. These societal changes have inevitably influenced gambling and gaming practices, and many people may have turned to betting or gaming as a means of social exchange. This study examined the influence of COVID-19 anxiety on increased mental health problems and their relationship to gambling and gaming problems. The mediating role of social motives for gambling and gaming was also investigated. Material and methods: Finnish adults (N = 1530; Mage = 46.67; 50.33% male) were recruited from a volunteer participant panel to participate in a survey study. COVID-19 anxiety was assessed using a scale adapted from the Spielberger State–Trait Anxiety Inventory. Mental health problems were evaluated with the five-item Mental Health Inventory. Gambling problems were measured using the Problem Gambling Severity Index, and gaming problems were measured with the Internet Gaming Disorder Test. Social motives for gaming were evaluated using a single-item measure. Analyses used generalised structural equation modelling. Results: COVID-19 anxiety predicted increased mental health problems, which were associated with heightened gambling and gaming problems. Social motives for gambling and gaming were a significant mediator, suggesting that gambling and gaming problems are emphasized markedly among those who are socially motivated by and involved in such games. Conclusions: Mental health problems experienced during the pandemic and the social properties of games might accentuate gambling and gaming problems. publishedVersion

The membership profile of Finnish trade unions has changed from male-dominated industrial workers to female-dominated service and public sector workers who are more highly educated. The Finnish labour market is strongly divided into female and male occupations and sectors, and these intersectional differences play an important part in the differentiation of developmental paths. The erosion of membership is mainly due to the rapid growth of the independent unemployment fund (YTK) competing with unemployment funds associated with trade unions. YTK has been much more successful in recruiting private sector male workers than women. Men’s decisions not to join the union are related to the shift in the motivation to unionise from social custom to instrumental reasons. Along with the gender majority shift, union identification has changed, and unions need to carry out ‘identity work’ to attain members. The shift in gender proportions has also had consequences for the collective bargaining system.

In social-ecological systems (SES), where social and ecological processes are intertwined, phenomena are usually complex and involve multiple interdependent causes. Figuring out causal relationships is thus challenging but needed to better understand and then affect or manage such systems. One important and widely used tool to identify and communicate causal relationships is visualization. Here, we present several common visualization types: diagrams of objects and arrows, X-Y plots, and X-Y-Z plots, and discuss them in view of the particular challenges of visualizing causation in complex systems such as SES. We use a simple demonstration model to create and compare exemplary visualizations and add more elaborate examples from the literature. This highlights implicit strengths and limitations of widely used visualization types and facilitates adequate choices when visualizing causation in SES. Thereupon, we recommend further suitable ways to account for complex causation, such as figures with multiple panels, or merging different visualization types in one figure. This provides caveats against oversimplifications. Yet, any single figure can rarely capture all relevant causal relationships in an SES. We therefore need to focus on specific questions, phenomena, or subsystems, and often also on specific causes and effects that shall be visualized. Our recommendations allow for selecting and combining visualizations such that they complement each other, support comprehensive understanding, and do justice to the existing complexity in SES. This lets visualizations realize their potential and play an important role in identifying and communicating causation. Funding Agencies|Swedish Research CouncilSwedish Research CouncilEuropean Commission [2018-06139]

BackgroundThe introduction of e-cigarettes on the tobacco market has brought new regulatory challenges, and particular concerns relate to e-cigarette uptake among young people. The aim of this study was to explore the use and social meaning of e-cigarettes among Nordic young people and to discuss this in the context of current legislation.MethodsThirteen focus groups were conducted with 46 Danish, Finnish, and Norwegian young people (24 boys) with vaping experience aged 15–20 years (mean age 17 years).ResultsYoung people's vaping stood out as an inherently social practice that was commonly interlinked with experimental use patterns. Relative to smoking, vaping was seen as socially acceptable and less harmful to health. Product innovations like flavour additives and nicotine-free liquid options added to perceptions of low harm, and innovative device design features facilitated new and playful user practices. Finally, digital markets eased the young people's access to e-cigarettes, and the digital world also represented an arena for e-cigarette exposure and self-presentation. They commonly viewed vaping-related content in their social media feeds and also produced such content themselves.ConclusionYoung people's vaping is a social practice interwoven in contemporary digital and global youth culture. Transnational regulations are needed to support individual countries in preventing e-cigarette use and exposure among young people. Background: The introduction of e-cigarettes on the tobacco market has brought new regulatory challenges, and particular concerns relate to e-cigarette uptake among young people. The aim of this study was to explore the use and social meaning of e-cigarettes among Nordic young people and to discuss this in the context of current legislation. Methods: Thirteen focus groups were conducted with 46 Danish, Finnish, and Norwegian young people (24 boys) with vaping experience aged 15–20 years (mean age 17 years). Results: Young people's vaping stood out as an inherently social practice that was commonly interlinked with experimental use patterns. Relative to smoking, vaping was seen as socially acceptable and less harmful to health. Product innovations like flavour additives and nicotine-free liquid options added to perceptions of low harm, and innovative device design features facilitated new and playful user practices. Finally, digital markets eased the young people's access to e-cigarettes, and the digital world also represented an arena for e-cigarette exposure and self-presentation. They commonly viewed vaping-related content in their social media feeds and also produced such content themselves. Conclusion: Young people's vaping is a social practice interwoven in contemporary digital and global youth culture. Transnational regulations are needed to support individual countries in preventing e-cigarette use and exposure among young people.

Organizational culture manifests in core beliefs, values and cultural artefacts. This study examines the organizational artefacts, for example, management practices, stance with the outside world, and content choices of European student radio stations, based on survey data gathered from radio managers in 19 countries. Student radio stations are non-commercial media outlets connected to higher education institutes, at least partly managed and operated by students. Previous research on organizational culture and media systems are heuristics for this study in examining whether European student radio stations cluster regionally based on the observed cultural artefacts or whether they show convergence. In contrast to these studies, findings suggest that the region of the station does not determine its cultural artefacts. The studied stations give freedom of choice to individual station members and lean towards alternative content but are also systematic in their management. If any, mainstream media and podcasts are seen as competition. publishedVersion

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This piece was originally conceived as a presentation in a webinar on 'Patchwork Ethnography' in June 2021. In both form and content, it speaks to three key concerns for feminist scholarship: the place of feminist knowledge in the academy, power and positionality in research, and an orientation towards gender justice in all spheres of life. In resisting the coerciveness of dominant academic rhetorical codes, the piece calls for taking seriously the promise of 'antihero care' ; for not just theorizing but transforming the situated lives of researchers. A starting point for such transformation is in recognizing the gendered and racialized ways in which work, care work, precarity, and privilege are distributed within and across societies and the differential risk that differently-placed researchers encounter when choosing to write subversively. Our academic and private lives are unavoidably intertwined and the need to pretend otherwise can put a great burden on scholars grappling to cope with various demands on their time and energy. There is a need for researchers to be more transparent about the devastating effects of patriarchy and neoliberal academia on their personal and professional lives. The choices we make about what and how we research, what and where we publish, and how we write can and should continue to advocate for justice for all in a world where our rights are continuously challenged. publishedVersion

The research objective of this article is to analyze the European Parliament’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic from the perspective of feminist governance. Feminist governance can either play a role in ensuring the inclusion of a gender perspective in crisis responses, or, quite the opposite, crises may weaken or sideline feminist governance. The empirical analysis focuses on two aspects of feminist governance: (1) a dedicated gender equality body and (2) gender mainstreaming. In addition to assessing the effectiveness of feminist governance, the analysis sheds light on the political struggles behind the policy positions. The article argues that feminist governance in the European Parliament was successful in inserting a gender perspective into the COVID-19 response. The article pinpoints the effects of the achievements of the European Parliament’s Women’s Rights and Gender Equality Committee and gender mainstreaming on gendering the pandemic crisis response.

Despite accounts of how artificial intelligence (AI) is replacing human labour, constant efforts are needed to keep AI-based automation running. In this chapter, we are particularly interested in data work that supports processes of automation. We explore an unconventional arrangement in which Finnish prisoners annotate text to produce training data for a local AI firm. The use of prison labour to train AI invites straightforward conclusions of exploitation of the marginalised. On a closer look, however, attention is drawn to local and situational variations of data labour: how high-tech development can be married with humane penal policies and low-cost labour with rehabilitative aspirations. We argue for an approach that can hold together seemingly contradictory value aims and open novel ways of exploring processes of automated decision-making. By acknowledging what is of value to the different parties involved, we can begin to see alternative paths forward in the study of automation.