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

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

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

The study presents a novel framework for studying biomedical alcohol research.

The purpose of this paper is to raise questions about the social issues involved in mental and physical health. It highlights how, even where social issues are evident, clinicians and clinical researchers often focus mainly on individual people and what has gone wrong with them. This has the effect of making it less likely that social exclusion and adversity will be taken into account or that clinicians will help to change these.

Three journal papers are summarised. The first one reports an attempt to test whether depression is a result of people feeling defeated and trapped. The second paper reports the results of analysing medical writing about domestic abuse. The third paper discusses the need for trainee clinicians to be made more aware of social conditions that affect people's lives.

It does appear that people who feel defeated and trapped are more likely to become depressed. However, the life circumstances that lead to feeling trapped need more attention. Medical writing about domestic abuse may need to incorporate the broader context so that it is not just seen as a “women's problem”. It may be worth training clinicians about social conditions and how they might help to change them.

These papers highlight important links between social exclusion and mental and physical health. There is a key role for clinicians and clinical researchers to be more part of the solution where they sometimes unwittingly help maintain the problems.

Lay people might disagree with the ‘formal’ knowledge of medicine produced in medical schools and the internet has provided an opportunity for them to present their ideas. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a new concept and has always been a controversial topic. Many people are presenting their views regarding ADHD on the web. This article explores a sample of ADHD‐related materials found by Google and evaluates the possible effects that different voices may have on ‘formal’ knowledge.

To analyse the relationship between China, patriachy, ageing, and social theory grounded in Judith Butler's notion of performativity.

This is a novel theoretical framework to examine instances of patriachal identities by using China as a case study.

Performativity, we suggest, offers productive insights into the processes of subjection and the nature of power relations that may be usefully incorporated into studies of the elderly in China.

This is a theoretical paper.

It raises questions to relationship of patriachy to understanding Chinese culture.

It is an original paper in that an application of Butler's conceptual tools have bot been applied elsewhere to examining China and ageing.

This underscores individual and social implications for how mental disorders and mental well-being are constructed, conceived of and treated. Further, this paper aims to examine positive psychology’s role in supporting the advancement of a broader systemic and contextual approach to mental health. With that aim, this paper connects data on mental health and well-being with peace studies to describe the systems of value and social ecologies underpinning mental disorders, using public happiness/Felicitas Publica as a possible framework to enhance public mental health while intervening at the local level (Bruni and Zamagni, 2007; Marujo and Neto, 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2021; Marujo et al., 2019).

Theoretical foundations and data on positive peace and mental well-being are described with the intention to propose a systemic, contextual, relational, communitarian, economic and sociopolitical perspective of well-being that goes beyond individual bodies and/or brains and, instead, views mental disorder and mental health as social currency (Beck, 2020).

The interventions using dialogic, conversational and community approaches are a possible path to promote peace, mental health and public happiness.

Examining the interplay between the fields of positive psychology, mental health and cultures of peace, this work contributes to the broadening of research and subsequent intervention topics through transdisciplinary approaches while reinforcing the role of systemic and social determinants and complementing the prevalent medical model and intraindividual perspective of mental health and well-being.

Adopting positive psychology to address mental health through public happiness concepts and interventions opens opportunities to respond to the ebb and flow of social challenges and life-giving opportunities. Therefore, the paper intends to articulate actor-related, relational, structural and cultural dimensions while moving away from discrete technocratic and individual models and pays attention to the way their implementations are aligned with both individual and social needs.

The work offers an inclusive, equalitarian, politically sensitive approach to positive mental health and positive psychology, bringing forward a structural transformation and human rights-based approach perspective while rethinking the type of social and political solutions to mental health issues.

Creating a critically constructive debate vis-à-vis the fluidity and complexity of the social world, the paper examines mental health and positive psychology simultaneously from a “hardware” (institutions, infrastructures, services, systems, etc.) and a “software” (i.e. individuals and community/societal relations).

The exponential growth of smartphones is complemented by an astronomical development of mobile apps that have been changing ways in which humans interact with each other, as well as how brands and customers interact. This study aims to examine the effect of mobile device and mobile app innovations on user lifestylisation among consumers from developing countries.

Through a qualitative approach, data was collected via focus group interviews from 32 participants from across 15 developing countries who were largely emerging cosmopolitans.

Using the thematic analysis technique, the study finds that consumer lifestylisations, based on consumption and utilisation of mobile devices and mobile apps, hinge on either pre-purchase considerations or post-purchase discoveries that stem from a bouquet of hedonic and/or utilitarian motivations. Two consumer categories are identified, with each category exhibiting unique patterns.

The empirical findings provide valuable theoretical contributions to new knowledge as well as practical implications for mobile gadget manufacturers and mobile app developers domiciled, or those aiming to establish their presence, in developing economies.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the contribution of the EFMN Issue Analysis to the identification of key emerging science and technology issues of high relevance for European policies, as well as to the development of future European science and technology policy priorities. As such, it describes the experience of the past three EFMN Issue Analyses (2005 to 2007), which focused on “Cognitive Science” (2005), “Healthy Ageing” (2006) and “Emerging Knowledge‐based Economy and Society” (2007).

The annual EFMN Issue Analysis aims at selecting and analysing one key emerging science and technology issue that is relevant for European Union policies. The selection is based on the screening and analysis of recent international foresights along a set of predefined criteria.

The paper highlights future socio‐economic perspectives and S&T developments coming along with the topics “Cognitive Science”, “Healthy Ageing” and “Emerging Knowledge‐based Economy and Society”, as well as policy recommendations as emerged from the respective expert workshop discussions. The paper also reflects on the methodology used, and experience of, and the lessons learned from the last three Issue Analyses.

This paper is of interest for foresight practitioners and policy‐makers at European level, as well as at national or regional level in European Member States.

The paper highlights the role of the EFMN Issue Analysis in providing the basis for well‐informed (science and technology) policy‐making.

Institutional ethnography is a method of inquiry that brings attention to people’s everyday work while simultaneously highlighting broader sites of administration and governance that may be organising that work. The purpose of this paper is to argue that the integration of institutional ethnography in health information practice research represents an important shift in the way that Library and Information Science professionals and researchers study and understand these practices.

This paper first explores the key tenets and conceptual underpinnings of Dorothy Smith’s institutional ethnography, illuminating the importance of moving between translocal and the local contexts and identifying ruling relations. Drawing from a library and information science study that combined interviews and textual analyses to examine the social organisation of family caregivers’ health-related information work, the paper then explores the affordances of starting in the local particularities and then moving outwards to the translocal.

The paper concludes with an overall assessment of what institutional ethnography can contribute to investigations of health information practices. By pushing from the local to the translocal, institutional ethnography enables a questioning of existing library and information science conceptualisations of context and of reappraising the everyday-life information seeking work/non-work dichotomy. Ultimately, in considering both the local and the translocal, institutional ethnography casts a wider net on understanding individuals’ health information practices.

With only two retrieved studies that combine institutional ethnography with the study of health information practices, this paper offers health information practice researchers a new method of inquiry in which to reframe the application of methods used.