Social Representations Approach Research Articles

COVID-19 and emerging adults in India: A social representation approach

The outbreak and rapid spread of the novel coronavirus disease or COVID-19 had health, social and economic ramifications for people worldwide. Using the framework of Social Representation Theory, the present research attempts to understand how emerging adults (18–29 years) made sense of the COVID-19 outbreak, the role of collectives (organizations) in managing it, and the evolution of this understanding over time. The function of this theoretical perspective in the present study is to help make sense of the COVID-19 pandemic as a threatening event and in the process understand if responsibility or blame is attributed to specific collectives. Data was collected in two phases, from ten participants (four males and six females), aged 18–29 years residing in India. Semi-structured interviews were used to generate data. Findings have been discussed as ‘sociogenesis of COVID-19’, ‘role of collectives: heroes, villains, or on the fence’, ‘collective symbolic coping: making sense of collective threats’, and ‘the next normal: learnings from COVID-19). Finally, this study would have implications for research on social representation and its evolution, especially of emerging infectious diseases and the representation of collectives may also be used to reevaluate health policies and get better prepared for future emergencies.

Exploring perceptions of extreme environments and extremophiles in Chilean schoolchildren: an ethnographic study.

Chile is unique because of its diverse extreme environment, ranging from arid climates in the north to polar climates in Patagonia. Microorganisms that live in these environments are called extremophiles, and these habitats experience intense ecosystem changes owing to climate warming. Most studies of extremophiles have focused on their biotechnological potential; however, no study has examined how students describe extremophiles. Therefore, we were interested in answering the following question: How do schoolchildren living in extreme environments describe their environments and extremophiles? We performed an ethnographic study and analyzed the results of 347 representative drawings of participants aged 12-16 years from three schools located in the extreme environments of Chile San Pedro de Atacama (hyper-arid, 2,400 m), Lonquimay (forest, 925 m), and Punta Arenas (sub-Antarctic, 34 m). The social representation approach was used to collect data, and systemic networks were used to organize and systematize the drawings. The study found that, despite differences between extreme environments, certain natural elements, such as trees and the sun, are consistently represented by schoolchildren. The analysis revealed that the urban and rural categories were the two main categories identified. The main systemic networks were rural-sun (21,1%) for hyper-arid areas, urban-tree (14,1%) for forest areas, and urban-furniture (23,4%) for sub-Antarctic areas. When the results were analyzed by sex, we found a statistically significant difference for the rural category in the 7th grade, where girls mentioned being more rural than boys. Students living in hyper-arid areas represented higher extremophile drawings, with 57 extremophiles versus 20 and 39 for students living in sub-Antarctic and forest areas, respectively. Bacteria were extremophiles that were more represented. The results provide evidence that natural variables and semantic features that allow an environment to be categorized as extreme are not represented by children when they are focused on and inspired by the environment in which they live, suggesting that school literacy processes impact representations of their environment because they replicate school textbooks and not necessarily their environment.

Nature based solutions for flood risks: What insights do the social representations of experts provide?

In the context of intensification of flood risks, Nature Based Solutions constitute an interesting approach to conciliate population’s protection and biodiversity. While this recently emerging concept has been the subject of studies in social sciences, there is no work yet with a social representation approach. In this work, we propose to study Nature Based Solutions for flood risk management through the prism of social representations and how they frame the implementation of Nature Based Solutions projects in the field (obstacles and levers). We interviewed 19 flood experts who can be divided into two groups regarding Nature Based Solutions: theorists and practitioners. We studied their discourses using two types of analyses: a lexicometric analysis of the similarities and a thematic analysis. The results showed that Nature Based Solution is a social representation object in its complexity, the polarisation it creates and its technicality. The two groups of participants have different representations. The practitioners may consider the Nature Based Solutions as "greenwashing" since they are presented as new and innovative, while the theorists contrast their Nature Based Solutions’ vision with a "grey" vision influenced by French civil engineering culture and a need to control ecosystems. Both groups agree that Nature Based Solutions thinking is about "leaving more room for nature", which echoes Dunlap’s New Environmental Paradigm. Moreover, the results suggest that the expression “Nature Based Solutions” is not well suited to all actors. We encourage using the expression “vegetal engineering” which may provide an opportunity to reconnect with the techniques applied in the field. It also enhances the value of ancestral knowledge, which allows the general public to better connect with the concept.

An investigation of politicians' responses to urban diversity and disadvantage: The case of the Danish 'parallel societies'.

We examine how Danish politicians articulate views on the 'parallel society agreement' (aka, the 'ghetto-laws'), a controversial legislative intervention aiming to manage urban migration-related diversity. Through nationwide urban redevelopment aimed at facilitating residential 'mixing', the goal of the legislation is to eliminate so-called 'parallel societies'-socio-economically deprived neighbourhoods characterized by high concentrations of ethnic minorities. In-depth interviews with Danish politicians (n = 11) explored how this proposal was supported, contested or rejected in situated discourse. Following social representations theory, we focus on how 'parallel societies' were constructed in relation to differing ideas about 'mainstream society' and value-laden oppositional meaning-categories (i.e. themata). In particular, we highlight processes of socio-ethical reasoning that occurred through thematization of a shared oppositional meaning-category: 'freedom-constraint'. Views on the intervention were articulated around this oppositional meaning-category. Moreover, a connection was observed between the views articulated by individual politicians and sets of congruent ideas and images mobilized to represent 'parallel societies'. We discuss the theoretical value of taking a social representations approach to urban policy debates, and the practical limitations of dominant representations for successfully promoting intercultural dialogue and engagement-the stated goal of this intervention.

Human-Horse Relationships, Horse Welfare, and Abuse in Mexico: A Social Representation Approach

Abstract Drawing on social representation theory, this study explored horse handlers’ understandings of “good” treatment, abuse, and human-horse relationships in tourism, leisure, and sport events in Mexico to examine the ways in which attitudes toward horse welfare are shaped by both national and cultural discourses and wider norms of the global equestrian community. Based on in-depth interviews, the study revealed that national and subcultural norms of the equestrian social world shape people’s attitudes to what is deemed “good treatment” and what is “abuse.” It suggests the need to understand better how cultural factors shape different people’s attitudes to those standards and look for ways to safeguard horse welfare while valuing local heritage.

Unpacking internal displacement in Philippine media using social representations theory

ABSTRACT This study unpacks socially shared meanings of internal displacement as illustrated in Philippine media, using a social representations approach. Following our theoretical framework, we identified processes of symbolic coping about internal displacement from among 422 media articles published between 2006 and 2020. Philippine media uses anchoring and objectification in socially representing forced migration. It associates internal displacement with events in Philippine history and links it with everyday emotions like anger, anxiety and fear. It describes involuntary migration using metaphors such as hell on earth, chicken in a coop and canned sardines. It uses symbolism, such as footwear and doll, to demonstrate evacuee empowerment and personifies the internally displaced as Muslims or Indigenous Peoples who are fleeing for their lives while carrying their possessions. Our findings point to internal displacement as a space not only for suffering and deprivation but also for sustaining oneself and demonstrating human agency. Our study shows that beyond the dire circumstances surrounding internal displacement are structural issues that need to be dealt with: armed conflicts, terrorism, violence and disaster management.

"I think I might be a bit wobbly in my corona moral" - young people's moral functioning during the COVID-19 lockdown: A social representations approach.

In this paper, we use social representations theory to examine how young people made sense of COVID-19 and the emergent behavioral guidelines during the lockdown in Denmark in Spring 2020. Further, we discuss how this informed their moral functioning. This research is explored through triangulation, investigating how COVID-19 was represented in central speeches by Danish leaders (N=4) and by young people in focus groups (n=5, N=25) and individual interviews (N=10). Results suggest that young people's moral functioning during COVID-19 depended on multiple, often polemic, representations. Consequently, their moral functioning was found to be an ambivalent practice, resulting in coping strategies of adaptation to their surroundings and othering fellow citizens deviating from the guidelines. In this context, coherent communication by authorities and community values are identified as key to promoting behavior change. As the social impact of COVID-19 is unprecedented in many societies, including the Danish, this study contributes to the field of emerging infectious diseases providing insights that are essential for the continued management of this and future pandemics.

Gender stereotypes in leadership: Analyzing the content and evaluation of stereotypes about typical, male, and female leaders.

Previous research often examined gender stereotypes in leadership with ratings on predetermined gendered characteristics concerning leaders' agency and communality (i.e., explicit measures). The aim of the present study was to broaden the understanding of gender stereotypes in leadership by taking more subtle approaches, that focus on what men and women actually ascribe to typical, male, and female leaders and how they implicitly evaluate them. An online survey collected (a) free associations which reflect social representations (e.g., dominant, empathic), (b) evaluations of the given associations as negative, neutral, or positive, and (c) ratings on Peabody's semantic differential combining non-gendered adjective pairs to an evaluative component of a typical leader, a male leader, and a female leader. Using the approach of social representations by analyzing 2,842 free associations from 194 participants shows the predominant gender stereotypes. Ratings of the free associations revealed that women evaluate characteristics associated with female leaders more negatively than those associated with typical leaders and male leaders. By contrast, using the evaluative component of non-gendered adjective pairs shows that typical and female leaders were often rated more positively than male leaders and that women were more likely to devalue male leaders. Directly asking about leaders (i.e., associations) might retrieve participants' gender stereotypes, whereas when using non-direct questions (i.e., evaluation component of adjective pairs) gender stereotypes might be less prominent. Thus, when evaluating leaders, practitioners and researchers should consider whether these evaluations were obtained explicitly or implicitly to assess potential influences of gender stereotypes.

A Preliminary Study on the Validity and Stability of Projective Methods: An Application of the Structural Approach of Social Representations with Traditional Mexican Cheeses.

Projective methods are qualitative tools used to study food consumer behavior. In recent years, there has been an increase in studies that use these tools to analyze consumer behavior, particularly with the word association (WA) technique. However, one of the challenges in using these methods is the stability and validity of the data. This research aimed to obtain preliminary information on the stability and validity of the associations generated by consumers with the WA technique, using the structural approach of social representations. For this, two studies were carried out; for the first study, a face-to-face survey was carried out in which 89 consumers participated, who wrote the first words that came to mind with the stimulus "Aculco" on a ballot paper. For the second study, 122 consumers completed the same task as in the first study; however, the participants were recruited from an online survey. A random sample (n = 50) of both studies was selected to explore the stability and validity of the results. In the three study samples, the words were grouped into categories and analyzed through the structural approach of social representations. The frequency of mention of the identified categories was compared with the chi-square test and the average position (AP) and the Cognitive Salience Index (CSI) were calculated. Prototype maps were built to study the structure of the categories according to the central core and peripheral areas. Cluster analysis was performed to corroborate the structure of the representations. Finally, multiple factor analysis (MFA) was performed to determine the similarity of the results obtained from the three samples using the RV coefficient. No statistical differences (p > 0.05) were identified in most of the representations (n = 11) generated from the WA task. Furthermore, the representation "Cheese and dairy products" was positioned in the central core of the three maps. The APs and the CSIs of each representation were similar in the three study samples. The RV coefficient (≥0.80) indicated similarity in the representations obtained. Results of this research can be useful for future studies that attempt to compare the stability and validity of the information based on qualitative and more flexible methodologies. Some methodological implications related to the validity and stability of projective methods are discussed.

DEWI SRI SEBAGAI FIGUR IBU MITOLOGIS: TINJAUAN NARASI DAN VISUAL FOLKLOR JAWA TIMUR

Dewi Sri is a character in Javanese mythology. This goddess is close to the Javanese community, especially the farming community. Dewi Sri as the goddess of rice is widely written in ancient literature as well as in oral literature (folklore). In practice, Dewi Sri is often mentioned in traditional rituals and beliefs of the Javanese people. The cult of Dewi Sri is proof of the existence of a deity in the form of mother in the belief system of patriarchal Javanese society. The research on Dewi Sri as a mythological mother figure is important as a source of creating works of art or digital literature based on local wisdom. So, the focuses of this research is to find the character of Dewi Sri based on narratives and visual review and to analyse Dewi Sri as a mythological mother. This is a qualitative research with a social representation approach. The data is in the form of text or verbal speech. Sources of data are the people of East Java. Data collected by interview and literature study. The result shows that Dewi Sri has a feminine character as the positive mother archetype in Jung's concept. Visually, Dewi Sri is depicted with feminine symbols of adult women, which is visually different from the ancient art works. Meanwhile, the divine figure of Dewi Sri that found was a mythological mother and spiritual figure with a feminine opposition as "Mother Goddess". Javanese belief that Dewi Sri gives bless with fertility. The conclusion is that figure of Dewi Sri can be used as a source of creating art and literature based on local wisdom.

Dialogue with difference: Meta-representations in political dialogue and their role in constructing the ‘other’

When faced with the aftermath of a divisive political event, how do citizens make sense of the political opinions of those who voted differently to them? Drawing on the Social Representations Approach (SRA) and its emphasis on communication as a medium through which meaning making occurs, we utilize dialogical analysis of focus group data (N = 36) collected after the UK’s referendum on leaving the EU. We focus on how voters engage with the perspective of the other in an intragroup dialogue setting. In doing so, this paper aims to explore the role of meta-representations, or ‘what we think other people think’, in contexts of contested political issues. We show the value of considering how meta-representations function to delegitimize different political views and vote choices, and by implication serve an important role in socially representing the ‘other’, constructing and reproducing intergroup boundaries. This process is achieved through drawing on semantic barriers, communicative tools that play a crucial role in safeguarding one’s own beliefs from the threat of alterity.

Distancing from the worst or facing the inescapable? Social representations and positioning of people in marginalised groups

AbstractThis article draws from a social representations approach (SRA) to present a qualitative inquiry of identity construction in interaction and as part of the social context. We argue that the concept of positioning, inherent to our understanding of SRA, provides a bridge between social representations and identities. Focusing on societally marginalised groups and with illustrative interview samples gathered from two different studies in Finland, this article aims to show how people who use hard drugs position themselves within dominating social representations of ‘addict’, ‘junkie’ and ‘polydrug user’. Two ways of positioning are employed to negotiate with negative social representations: resistance and partial acceptance. ‘Distancing from the worst’ as a way of positioning characterises resistance and illustrates how a positive identity is constructed by describing the ‘ingroup other’ in negative ways, enabling justification of why the responded is not like that. In contrast, ‘facing the inescapable’ as a way of positioning illustrates partial acceptance that is engaged when people feel they cannot control their use or their lives more generally and cannot justify another position than that of a prototypical user. Our article advances the literature on the role of positioning within representational fields as enabling individuals to reject, challenge or accept the dominating social representations, while at the same time serving as a resource to cope with identity threats and maintain a positive identity.

Representaciones sociales de la identidad y los roles de género en adolescentes de una escuela secundaria de México

Gender identity and roles are two of the most complex and important aspects of sexuality, as they define how people should think, feel and behave within society according to the gender they identify with. They are formed from the experiences, beliefs and evaluations that each person makes from childhood about what it means to be a man or woman in a society, which is influenced by both the socio-historical context and the biological factors of sexuality. Adolescence is the critical period of development when great bodily and psychological changes are faced, which forces people to behave according to their sexual nature and the acceptance (or non-acceptance) of the gender culturally associated to their genitals. Social representations (SR), in turn, allow us to understand how collective thought is formed around a specific phenomenon and how the social context influences the construction of beliefs. Thus, this study has set out to describe the SR of gender identity and roles in a group of adolescents in a secondary school in Mexico. To achieve this goal, the research has been framed within the qualitative paradigm, working under the phenomenological design from the process approach of SR. A projective technique of incomplete sentences was used to access the beliefs of the adolescents who participated in the study. The instrument used was the Incomplete Sentences on Sexuality of the Colombian Institute of Family Welfare, which is composed of 10 reagents that explore gender identity and the behaviors related to it. The sample consisted of 73 students aged 12 to 16 years from a secondary school in the city of Santiago de Querétaro in Mexico. A thematic analysis was carried out to identify the codes, categories and subcategories present in the students’ responses, and finally the method of consistency checking was applied based on the review and analysis made by another coder of the results obtained in order to guarantee the objectivity of the study. In this way, the categories of gender identity and cultural gender roles were obtained, within which subcategories emerged that encompass the concepts of masculinity and femininity for the participants, as well as the disadvantages associated with these two genders for the first and the second categories (roles, professions and behaviors that are prohibited for men and women). Among the results, it is evident that the SR of most adolescents around gender identity and roles have been constructed under the sex/gender system and have been influenced by what they have seen or heard from their parents at home. Therefore, the behaviors they believe they can perform are linked to the gender stereotypes they have included within their belief systems and values. This shows that for most participants sex and gender are synonymous, implying that people’s behavior, roles, attitudes and characteristics are defined by the sex they are born with, in which men are superior and women are inferior. According to this analysis of the narratives expressed by the participants, it was found that a small group are included within what has been called the “new masculinities”. Finally, it is worth mentioning that the novelty of the research is represented by the instrument and technique used, which allowed the participants to know how everything they have seen and heard in their homes has influenced their definition of what it is to be male, female and the roles of people in society according to their gender. It is recommended that more studies be done in the future on the construction of gender in adolescents, since it continues to be an issue of social tension and inequality in Latin America and throughout the world. https://doi.org/10.16888/interd.2022.39.2.10

Social media and diatopic tension: A psychosocial study with Haddad and Bolsonaro's voters in Brazil

This paper aims at analyzing the communicational dynamics activated by the dissemination of fake news on social media in moments of collective mobilization, in the frame of the dialogic approach of social representations. In order to establish a comparative analysis, three focus groups were created with voters of candidates Fernando Haddad and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, who discussed the content of purposely selected Facebook posts. The study extrapolated the conversational exercise to the dynamics of a social media, concluding that digital ecosystems, in moments of collective mobilization, behave as representational fields guided, from the psychosocial point of view, by relations of identity tension and, from a rhetorical or communicational point of view, by a phenomenon called diatopic tension, characterized by the coexistence of four interdependent variables: (1) topological divergence; (2) situational heteroglossy; (3) affective intensity and 4) apparent perception of factual control.

Preventive Measures For pressure injuries: structure of social representations of nursing teams.

To analyze the structure of social representations on the preventive measures to pressure injury of nursing teams. Qualitative research, based on the structural approach of Social Representations. It was conducted with 103 nursing professionals from a specialized hospital, using the Word Association Test. Data were submitted to prototypical analysis, using two analysis techniques of centrality, similarity and double negation. The evocations "care" and "decubitus" made up the central core of the representation, which was structured based on the imagery dimension of changing position, from which a hierarchy of preventive measures occurs. The term "care" referred to the normative dimension of representation as a responsibility of nursing, and to the practical dimension, as preventive actions with the use of technologies. The image, normative and practice dimensions are part of the representation structure and guide compliance with preventive measures.

The role of social interaction during visitation on social destination image formation

ABSTRACT With the support of the social representation approach, this study explores what role social interaction plays in the process of destination image formation in a group vacation travel context. Participants are ten tourists traveling to Jordan on a 10-day packaged tour. Data were collected with pre-and post-visitation in-depth interviews and participant observation conducted during visitation. Findings reveal that intra-group social interaction during visitation affects the cognitive and affective makeup of individuals’ destination image. The proposal of an integrated conceptualization of the investigated process constitutes the main theoretical contribution. Practical implications relevant to industry practitioners are highlighted.

The Notion of Common and Social Representations

The recent emergence of social and political movements calling for common sense and the use of the notion of common in philosophy and social sciences has led to the opening of a reflection on the social and scientific representations concerning them. After having mentioned some political uses of the notions of common sense and common, we examine a notion that is closely associated with them: that of community on which S. Moscovici expresses a reserved position but introduces a new perspective on cybercommunities and the importance attached to affectivity in community groups. The ways of dealing with common sense, identified over time, from antiquity to the present day, highlight certain recurrences from a double perspective. From a typological point of view, several characterizations are distinguished: through simple sharing, through the sameness of moral values and emotional dimensions, through rooting in daily experience, through its devaluation as a form of knowledge in relation to science, through rationality, through its potential for revolt or on the contrary through conformity. From a conceptual point of view, common sense is analyzed as an epistemic characteristic of a group, in its content, formation, transmission, and role in social cohesion. The latest developments in the reflection highlight its link with democracy and populism. The term common of recent appearance is situated opposite the notion of common goods which, after having focused on material realities, now integrates the facts and practices of knowledge, being the subject of a specific domain: the commons of knowledge. The common appears as a new way of approaching social relationships and responds to the desire to introduce a relational, ethical and political dimension into the analysis of social and change processes. In this respect, the call to the common presents affinities with the approach of social representations. The examination of the different scientific and secular representations regarding the notions of community, common sense and common makes it possible to establish connections with the perspective of the study of social representations and to open the way for new investigations.

There's no smoke without fire: Smoking in smoke-free acute mental health wards.

People who smoke with serious mental illness carry disproportionate costs from smoking, including poor health and premature death from tobacco-related illnesses. Hospitals in New Zealand are ostensibly smoke-free; however, some mental health wards have resisted implementing this policy. This study explored smoking in acute metal health wards using data emerging from a large sociological study on modern acute psychiatric units. Eighty-five in-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with staff and service users from four units. Data were analysed using a social constructionist problem representation approach. Although high-level smoke-free policies were mandatory, most participants disregarded these policies and smoking occurred in internal courtyards. Staff reasoned that acute admissions were not the time to quit smoking, citing the sceptres of distress and possibly violence; further, they found smoking challenging to combat. Inconsistent enforcement of smoke-free policies was common and problematic. Many service users also rejected smoke-free policies; they considered smoking facilitated social connections, alleviated boredom, and helped them feel calm in a distressing environment - some started or increased smoking following admission. A minority viewed smoking as a problem; a fire hazard, or pollutant. No one mentioned its health risks. Psychiatric wards remain overlooked corners where hospital smoke-free policies are inconsistently applied or ignored. Well-meaning staff hold strong but anachronistic views about smoking. To neglect smoking cessation support for people with serious mental illness is discriminatory and perpetuates health and socioeconomic inequities. However, blanket applications of generic policy are unlikely to succeed. Solutions may include myth-busting education for service users and staff, local champions, and strong managerial support and leadership, with additional resourcing during transition phases. Smoke-free policies need consistent application with non-judgemental NRT and, potentially, other treatments. Smoking cessation would be supported by better designed facilities with more options for alleviating boredom, expressing autonomy, facilitating social connections, and reducing distress.

Original burger (traditional) or burger with mushroom addition? A social representation approach to novel foods

Currently, consumers’ interest in healthy products has attracted the attention of academia and the meat industry, which has focused mainly on incorporating ingredients with healthier properties. In this context, the aim of this study was to investigate the social representation of original burgers and burgers with mushroom addition considering different sexes and body mass indexes (BMIs) of individuals. Thus, 209 Brazilians answered a word association task followed by a word classification based on their importance and valence for original burgers and burgers with the addition of mushrooms. To obtain the structure of social representation, the words were positioned into four distinct zones based on their frequency of elicitation and importance. Also, the polarity index was used to give a connotation to the words. Three groups of consumers were identified. The first group (consumers with class-1 obesity of both sexes) associated the original burger with positive categories (cheese, juicy, seasoned, food, tasty, joy, salad and delicious). The second one (female consumers with pre-obesity and class-1 obesity) associated the burger with the addition of mushrooms with the elements price, different, vegetarian, flavor, gourmet and healthy. Finally, the third group (men and women for both stimuli and with a wide range of BMI) characterized burgers with sensory attributes, feelings and moments of consumption. In conclusion, the social representation of the original burger and the burger with the addition of mushrooms differed among consumers, suggesting that the main associations can be the main motivations for the consumption of a certain product.

The national divide: A social representations approach to US political identity

AbstractExtending research on US ideological identity as a social identity, this study employs a social representations approach to capture identity meaning as a form of national attachment. Across two studies (n = 723), we demonstrate that two novel organizing principles of US ideological identity—national reverence (veneration of the nation in the abstract, its symbols, sacred texts, and founding fathers) and individual support (a focus on the progress of individuals and the change required to bring about equality)—significantly predicted ideological self‐categorization, 2016 presidential voting, and affective political polarization over and above right‐wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation. The results suggest an integration of national and conservative identities that places US national identity in opposition to liberal identity and to progress and equality, pointing to the divisive employment of national identity in the current political environment.