The social representation of telecommunications

Abstract

For a long time now sociologists have spoken of the domestication of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to indicate their process of integration in everyday life. In this paper, we wish to deal with a crucial aspect of this process, which is the domestication of ICTs at the socio-cognitive level. Our aim is to reconstruct how these technologies have been metabolised in the system of social thought, and the way in which they have been integrated conceptually. At the same time, we wish to propose the methodology of social representations as being particularly suitable for investigating the social meaning of telecommunications. In the course of a telephonic survey of a sample of Italian population of 2,100 persons, 210 interviewees were asked to associate two terms with 10 cue words: telecommunications, fax, television, telephone, computer, mobile phone, radio, video-recorder, stereo, newspapers. The associations obtained were analysed by factor analysis of simple correspondences.