Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) involve long term intense social bonds between male players. Still, little is known about how masculinity constructs work as glue in these game communities. This study concerns masculine identities in applications (N=210) for community membership of a MMORPG community in Finland. Drawing on three identity dimensions (virtual, real, and projective) and three masculinity dimensions (heroic, ordinary, and revolting) the study shows that gamers emphasize real-world identity's ordinary and deviant masculinities, while heroic identity constructs are almost non-existing. Constructs of the virtual identity contained attributes and characteristics of the gamers' in-game skills. An ordinary masculine identity was emphasized in view of gamers' suitability as member of the clan and it was further underscored by "geek" and "nerd" characteristics. Being an outsider group (gamers), but still emphasizing the "ordinary" and being the "average guy," deviates from governing media images of gamers' communities as breeding grounds of isolation and aggression.

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, character and concepts. The governments’ changing position towards its welfare political mandate emerges in three distinct periods: 1) 1950 through the 1970s, when the welfare state was being constructed; 2) the 1980s and 1990s, as the concept was further developed and internally synchronized; and 3) 2000 to 2015, a time of increasing estrangement from universal notions. The study shows that as late as 2014, the welfare state’s aims of inclusion and universalism were dramatically toned down to an absolute minimum in the government programmes. The article shows that in contemporary times, the coalition government system may have strengthened the welfare state ethos. This is a finding of great significance for a structural-political perspective on the support of welfare state ideas.

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