New divides and alienation

A woman sits in a parking lot outside a shopping mall, enjoying a donut. She is on her way to pick up her children from daycare after a double shift as a healthcare worker at an understaffed hospital. She has turned on a live broadcast on TikTok and explains to her followers that these are the 20 min of her day when she doesn't feel any demands from anyone. It is her little sacred moment that she has longed for; thinking of this moment has helped her through her shifts. Soon she will have to start the car to pick up the children and go home to cook dinner, but, in this moment, she can enjoy a little treat and some peace and quiet.

Among all the hearts and encouraging words from her live audience, some questioning about how she has chosen to spend her minutes of respite will soon enough appear: “Wouldn't it be smarter to eat a fruit and go for a brisk walk?” writes one person. “You're going to gain weight and get sick if you keep up this habit” writes another.

The mental model of the receiver

In all communication, we encapsulate mental models of the receiver and our own relationship with the receiver as speakers. Comments on how an exhausted and overworked person should be sensible and act differently will entail mental models that signal insensitivity. They communicate an inability to read the room and understand the realities of other people's life situation. The person in the car clearly sleeps too little, works too much and longs for a break. The idea that it is okay to critique someone who is struggling indicates a broken moral human contract.

Ironically, on social media, it is often the virtuous and “good” people who fail to understand poor life choices. They have maybe – at least in their messages on the social media – been alienated from how it feels to be a flawed human being. I wonder if the mental model of the recipients also holds true in authorities’ communication to citizens?

Authority can be seen as a relationship that acquires legitimacy and trust through communication. According to philosopher Joseph Raz’ service conception of authority (Raz, 1986), authority can be justified when it helps individuals act more rationally or efficiently than they would otherwise. The key question becomes the interpretation and evaluation of when rationality or autonomy is actually increased: for the woman in the parking lot, her possibilities to survive her day and take care of her children might depend on the break from catering to other people all day long.

The limits of authority legitimacy

For authority legitimacy to endure, it has to remain in its scope of justification. This is likely to have contributed to the negative reactions to the 2023 Nordic dietary recommendations that incorporated environmental considerations (Blomhoff et al., 2023; TT, 2024). Many researchers and experts were surprised by the sharp reactions, emphasizing that the guidelines were strictly based on scientific evidence, not political or moral motives (Fogelholm & Erkkola, 2024). However, the problem is likely to have less to do with the public in the Nordic countries questioning facts or not understanding or believing research– the problem might be that the authority is not legitimized in the necessary communication of the social contract. Dietary recommendations from authorities is a genre that leaves out acknowledgement of complexity and the necessary self-critical reflection for building trust. This is indeed a flaw, as we know that the weakest social contract is found in societies where the citizen is treated as an inferior or a villain – a topic recently addressed in the introspection of the US 2024 presidential election (Burns, 2024).

The resistance towards recommendations to skip meat show up in studies as a consequence of identity politics and a masculinity fetish (Camilleri et al., 2023). However, this narrow explanation that only focuses on a polarized identity politics risks further fuelling alienation and divides. Food is not simply nutrition or a vehicle for health, or a sense of self and belonging, or a way of impacting climate change. The repertoire is much wider than that: it is the first bond you have with your caregiver and sometimes the only solid in-depth social choreography people have with their family and their fellow human beings. Food is a different need and a different cultural product for every body, every mind, every life situation, etc. In the information age, most people's eating habits entail a stressful navigation of contradictory advice, eating disordered cultural connotations, weight problems, hormonal change, availability of food products, money and time. Incorporating peoples eating into a social contract is a puzzle that is hard to solve.

Health literacy and susceptibility of fact and information may vary among different parts of the public (Sørensen et al., 2015), but alcohol policy debates have taught us that health communication is not a one-way street in which the enlightened expert speaks to the subject. There are some middle steps that must be taken to legitimize authority: these steps have to do with understanding the person sitting in the car with their donut and also believing in this person's capabilities to respond once their predicaments are acknowledged.

In this issue

In a debate article, Nicolay Borchgrevink Johansen (2024) discusses how drug related problems have been framed in Norway. Dyrendahl et al. (2025) inspect how teenage girls experience the use of substances, how the use impacts their daily lives, and their relationships with peers, family and welfare professionals. Myhre and Fineide (2025) discuss experiences of professionals in coordination in treatments for people who use anabolic androgenic steroid (AAS). Glad et al. (2025) have studied how the judiciary and social services succeed in identifying and providing support to adolescents convicted of drug offences in Sweden. Kvia et al. (2025) explore how the peer-led, manual-based course, “Recovery is up to you”, is experienced in a Norwegian context.