Study Of Social Representations Research Articles

Use of Hypothetical Situations as a Methodological Resource in a Social Representations Study

Use of Hypothetical Situations as a Methodological Resource in a Social Representations Study

Femicide in Mexico. Who Are the Slain Women According to News Media? A Quantitative Study of Social Representations of Victims and Perpetrators.

Research on femicide news revealed discriminatory narratives against the victims in specific cases and social contexts. This article uses a quantitative approach to analyze the news content that serves to create social representations of victims and perpetrators. We propose a methodology based on examining independent elements in the descriptions, identifying extratextual patterns, and providing the data to compare the social representations of intimate partner violence (IPV), familiar, and non-IPV femicides. Three online news outlets were analyzed from July 2014 to December 2017, creating a corpus of 2,527 articles. The results revealed that it is more common to create negative representations of victims than negative representations of the perpetrators.

Sensory experiences and social representation – Embodied multimodality of common‐sense thinking

AbstractDiscussions on the body frequently foreground in empirical studies of social representations. However, there is scarce theoretical literature within social representations theory focusing on embodied social representation. This paper aims to contribute to the understanding of embodied, sensory experiences as part of social representation. More precisely, it attempts to elaborate how individual, social, bodily, and material layers work together in embodied social representation. This paper approaches the topic from four viewpoints: (1) social representation as action, (2) phenomenology, (3) embodied and socially situated cognition, and (4) sensory epistemologies and sensescapes. These approaches are used to provide insight into the conscious and unconscious processes of social representation and the multimodality of social representation. The paper contributes to the understanding of the role of sensory experiences and embodiment in the theory of social representations.

Quality of life from women's perspective in the exercise of sex work: a study of social representations.

to analyze the social representations elaborated by sex workers from Alto Sertão Produtivo Baiano about quality of life. a qualitative study, based on the Social Representation Theory, carried out in the region of Alto Sertão Produtivo Baiano, with 30 sex workers. Individual in-depth interview was carried out, with speeches organized in a corpus and treated in IRAMUTEQ, enabling lexical analysis for Descending Hierarchical Classification. four thematic classes emerged, in which social representations of quality of life pervade: money earned to supply needs; association with healthy living and obtaining health (physical and mental); balance of emotions (although there are some negative sensations such as fear and anxiety); and faith in a deity. the social representations elaborated by sex workers about quality of life are anchored in concepts, subjective and practical, punctuated by the World Health Organization.

Methodological strategies in the study of social representation: developments and trends

Any research in the field of social sciences is built on solid arguments and acquires scientific weight when scientific methodologies related to the researched subject are used. Regarding the study of social representations (SR), researchers’ interest in the use of new methodologies, including the identification of the most optimal ways of combining methods for a better knowledge of the studied representational object, is one of the current trends in the development of the field of RS. Through this article we propose to briefly analyse some directions in the evolution of methodological strategies in the study of RS, presenting the classical and recent methods used in RS research.

Выявление феномена когнитивной полифазии о психическом нездоровье посредством проективной методики «Бабблз»

The article discusses the results of the application of the projective technique "Bubbles" in the study of social representations of mental illness. The purpose of the study: to identify multidirectional social perceptions of mental illness. Research hypothesis: respondents' social perceptions of mental illness are characterized by duality. The sample consisted of Muslims – N = 111 (men – 53, women – 58 people) and Orthodox Christians – N = 114 (men – 49 people, women – 65 people), non–believers – N=113 (men – 76 people, women - 37 people), aged 18-23, 40-45, 60-65 years old, living in Moscow. Used: the author's questionnaire, which included 29 statements, the "Bubbles" technique. It was found that in both groups of respondents, the core of the JV about the mentally ill contains elements that demonstrate a positive orientation. The use of the "Bubbles" projective technique revealed the predominant negative nature of the perception of mentally ill people in three groups of respondents (the least negative perception in the group of respondents of Muslims (p<0.07). Respondents of the studied groups aged 18-23 years demonstrate the most positive representation of a mentally ill person than respondents aged 60-65 years (p<0.08). Thus, the results obtained with the help of a quantitative survey are in contradiction with the results of the qualitative method, thereby revealing the coexistence of SPS of different content, and therefore, allowing us to assert the phenomenon of cognitive polyphasia.

COVID-19 and Elderly Females—a Study of Social Representations in Brazil

This study investigates psychosocial aspects related to preventive behavior and social representations (SR) of COVID-19 for elderly females. The method used to understand these features was an online questionnaire for 326 women over 60 years old. In general, participants are afraid of COVID-19, believe that may kill them, and perceive that they do not venture themselves much. They consider themselves to be moderately informed about COVID-19. Right-winged participants believed more in the hydroxychloroquine efficacy with a greater belief that viruses and diseases may have been manufactured by organizations. Left-winged participants believe more in the truth of media information and also have a greater belief in science. Concerning the SR of COVID-19, a possible central core was observed around the following elements: fear, isolation, suffering, and danger. The conclusion is that there is an intense political polarization around the theme due to the political positioning of the participants

Diffusion and Propaganda About Anti-aging in Brazilian Media: A Study of Social Representations

Resumo Esta pesquisa buscou mapear conteúdos relativos ao antienvelhecimento em revistas de grande circulação e no noticiário brasileiro, entre 1º de janeiro de 2016 e 31 de dezembro de 2019. Foram investigadas as revistas Claudia, Boa Forma, VIP e Carbono Uomo. Houve ainda coleta no portal de notícias G1, da Rede Globo de Televisão, voltado ao público geral. Foram criados dois corpora distintos formados pelos conteúdos do G1 e das revistas que, então, foram submetidos à Classificação Hierárquica Descendente pelo software IRaMuTeQ, dando origem a dois subcorpora e quatro classes para cada um. Os resultados apontam uma forte tendência mercadológica nas revistas, que buscam conduzir os leitores ao consumo de produtos e à realização de procedimentos estéticos. Por outro lado, as notícias jornalísticas apregoam um modelo de vida mais saudável como principal prática antienvelhecimento, ao mesmo tempo que alertam sobre os riscos envolvidos nos procedimentos e produtos estéticos irregulares. Em geral, o conteúdo das revistas dissipa representações sociais que idealizam um padrão de beleza do corpo jovial, associando a velhice à fealdade, enquanto o do portal de notícias G1 voltam-se à saúde e longevidade.

Learning from each other: leaders' social representations of career beginners and career beginners' self-assessment

Today's youth face prejudice and stereotyping in the workplace; in times of crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, their prevalence and strength may increase. We conducted a qualitative study of social representations of key exchange partners – leaders and career beginners. In the first phase, we conducted semi-structured interviews to identify the dominant social representations that small business leaders (N = 9) hold about career beginners. In the second phase, we examined how future career beginners (N = 26) responded to five hypothetical work situations based on the leaders' social representations. The social exchange partners shared the narrative that career growth, advancement, and financial incentives are important motivators for career beginners, but contradicted each other in their accounts of career beginners' initiative levels and in their accounts of preferred leadership styles. The findings help to raise awareness of the mutual representations and expectations of different age groups in the work context.

From Prototypical Stimuli to Iconographic Stimuli: The Power of Images in the Study of Social Representations

When we are interested in the image of a social object, we are interested in what individuals have perceived about that object, the ways in which they have interpreted those perceptions, and what they think about that object. Fully agreeing with the idea that the use of iconographic stimuli can enhance the traditional methods and techniques that are used to study any social representation, in this article, two techniques will be presented. The first, the prototypical stimuli technique, was proposed in the second half of the 1980s by Galli and Nigro. The second technique, iconographic stimuli, creatively integrate images and words in a single tool, was designed more recently to study the social representation of culture by Galli, Fasanelli, and Schember. Researches here reviewed clearly shows that the image has the great power to attract to itself the very objects depicted, a power that the word often does not possess. It is images that make people reflect, help them to think about issues concerning the fundamental aspects of everyday life. The work here presented, carried out in first person by the writer, as well as by all the other authors who are concentrating their efforts in this direction, only represents a starting point of reflection. New and more articulated studies will be able to support with heuristic evidence what so far seems to be configured as a suggestive hypothesis, which in any case will require a wider and shared interdisciplinary effort.

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.

People’s understanding of the COVID-19 pandemic: social representations of SARS-CoV-2 virus in Italy

This study examined the social representations of SARS-CoV-2 virus in Italy. We used the technique of free word association involving 1572 adults living in Italy. An open coding procedure and content analysis lead to the identification of 13 key topics representing the categorisation of concepts that emerged from the elicited words. The most common categories were spread of the virus, negative feelings, life during quarantine, and health consequences of the virus. Multidimensional scaling of co-occurrences of categories revealed these categories were grouped into four thematic areas. In addition, we found that the frequency of the categories of words was associated with gender, age, well-being, and mental health symptoms. By revealing complex and differentiated social representations, results from the present study provide a comprehensive insight on Italian people’s perception of COVID-19 outbreak in the Spring of 2020. This early study of social representations forms a useful basis for later studies, in order to understand how collective understandings and framings of risk have evolved across the duration of the pandemic.

Covid-19 and mental health: A study of social representations with university students

Covid-19 and mental health: A study of social representations with university students

COVID-19 and the social organization of knowledge in Wikipedia: a study of social representations

PurposeThe paper aims to present the development of conceptualization of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) based on associations with other articles on English edition of Wikipedia. The main goal of the paper is to study the social organization of knowledge about COVID-19 within the Wikipedia community of practice.Design/methodology/approachThe methodological approach taken in this study was based on the application of Moscovici's theory of social representations to Wikipedia's knowledge organization system (KOS). Internal links in the Wikipedia article about COVID-19 were considered anchors in its social representations. Each link in the introductory part of the article was considered an indicator of the semantic relationship between COVID-19 and other concepts from Wikipedia's knowledge base. The subject of this study was links extracted from all revisions of the COVID-19 article between February and September 2020. Qualitative and quantitative analyses were performed on these conceptual structures using both synchronic and diachronic approaches.FindingsIt was found that the evolution of anchors in the Wikipedia article on COVID-19 was in line with the mechanism of symbolic coping related to infectious disease. It went through stages of divergence, convergence and normalization. It shows that this mechanism governs the social organization of knowledge related to COVID-19 on Wikipedia.Originality/valueNo studies have been devoted to the image of COVID-19 as presented by the evolution of links in Wikipedia and its implications for knowledge organization (KO).

Russian Identity in the Digital Age and social Perceptions of social media users

The article proposes approaches to solving the problem of the ongoing crisis of national-state identification of young citizens of Russia and the associated socio-political risks of a delayed nature. Digitalization radically changes the structure of employment of the population, the nature of socio-economic and socio-political relations, the functioning and reproduction of the culture underlying group, ethnic, national-state identity, creates the possibility of effective cross-border external influence. These changes contain significant risks of destabilizing the state and its main institutions, the formation of a controlled "digital society". The results of the first stage of an empirical study of social representations of Russia by young users of social networks are presented. The article substantiates the dependence of national-state identity on social ideas about one's country, which are being transformed in the context of digitalization of all spheres of life. The structural-functional and content-morphological characteristics of the social ideas of young people about Russia have been determined. Differences in the social perceptions of young people of different categories were revealed, and differences in the significance and valence of the elements of the "core" zone were revealed. It is planned to conduct the second stage of research on the structure and content of social perceptions of Russia by young users of social networks with different ideological preferences, socio-political sentiments, in order to test the significance of the elements of the “core” zone depending on political orientations.

The influence of the environment on a person's sexual orientation: intergenerational analysis in Russia

The psychological studies of the phenomenon of homosexuality is easier to find in European and American research. In this connection, the social-psychological specifics of representations towards homosexuality seems logical, as well as a valuable diversity of representations within society. Of particular interest is the study of this attitudes in the information society, where the media and social networks form bright, often polar points of view. In some previous papers it was shown that the Z Generation is described in terms of more tolerant position towards commonly segregated social groups. The purpose of this study was to reveal the representations about homosexuality among various generations of Russians. The methodological core of the research was the study of social representations (P. Vergesse method). The research methods implied the questionnaire aimed at figuring out representations about homosexuality and a modified variant of the RAHI test. Sample was N = 444 (residents of Russia, 16-65 y.o.). The hypotheses of the research were confirmed: an inverse relationship between belonging to a generational cohort and attitude towards homosexuality as normal was revealed. A significant difference between the Z Generation in tolerance of representations about homosexuality was shown. Some ‘double standards’ towards male and female homosexuality were distinguished. The basic notion of homosexuality as a interaction, based, on a sexual (not love-spiritual kind of relationship), was defined. Conclusions were drawn about the multidimensional influence of channels of mass communication on different generations.

Социальные представления о брачном партнере: поколенческий подход

Objective. Comparison of the marriage partner social representations of representatives of generations Y, X and Baby Boomers. Background. The sphere of marriage and romantic relationships is influenced by transformational processes in society. The romanticization of loneliness, the postponement of marriages and the births causes the interest in the study of social representations about the marriage partner of post-student youth. Study design. The article examines the possible connection between social representations of a marriage partner and the family role positioning on the one hand, and the content about romantic relationships that respondents browse in social networks, on the other. The Kraskal-Wallace H criterion was used to check existence and sort of possible connection. Participants. Sample: 525 people, including Millennials — 192 people, representatives of generation X — 176 and baby boomers — 157. Measurements. Author’s questionnaire of social representations about marriage and marriage partner; questionnaire “Marriage Role Expectations and Claims” by A. Volkova; set of questions about usage of social networks and other communication channels. Results. The core of social representations about the marriage partner and the periphery close to the core change slightly from generation to generation. With the growth of respondents’ life experience increases the willingness to accept complex life circumstances and the perception of relationship as a process that requires permanent effort. Conclusions. Problematic trends in family and marriage relations are presumably the result of sociocultural changes, rather than social representations of the marriage partner.

Knowledge and practices of Primary Care professionals on diabetic neuropathy: study of social representations.

to analyze the knowledge and practices of Primary Health Care professionals about diabetic neuropathy through their social representations. a qualitative, descriptive study, anchored in the procedural aspect of the Theory of Social Representations. It was carried out in four Family Health Units in Belém-Pará, with 31 professionals from four health teams. Data were produced by individual semi-structured interviews, and the corpus was submitted to content analysis. two thematic categories were defined, showing the participants' understanding and imagination about neuropathy, as well as the biopsychosocial repercussions of this complication in patients' daily lives. The multidisciplinary practices developed in the context of disease treatment/prevention and the consequences of this performance were also shown. professionals' representations are anchored in neuropathy occurrence due to the deficient standard of care for themselves by patients, which results in the team's surpassing care attitude as an alternative to illness' challenges.

Lebanon and the Middle East: factors of strategic choice (on the results of field studies of social representations of Arab youth)

Lebanon and the Middle East: factors of strategic choice (on the results of field studies of social representations of Arab youth)

El Salvador and stereotypes of women prevailing in your television advertising

Stereotypes naturalize social imageries on gender and sexuality, therefore, it turns out important to advance the investigation of these themes, in order to discover various edges that allow to capture, analyze and interpret aspects significant of the media representations (Muñoz & Bastidas, 2016). The different edges to address the issue of gender stereotypes and the violence that can trigger are important to take into account, especially if you talk about this reproduction takes place in mass media such as television, and with tools such as advertising. In El Salvador, the reproduction of stereotypes gender in advertising is defined, according to the Salvadoran Institute for Development for the Woman (ISDEMU), as a type of violence against women, specifically as symbolic violence (ISDEMU, 2013), For what is important the analysis of this social problem from the point of marketing view, specifically advertising on television, which is a massive and important medium of transmission of advertising content. This study aims to determine the existence of gender stereotypes in advertising Salvadoran open signal television, and also identify the different types of stereotypes present in said advertising, in order to start a way to later understand the impact that these can generate in a society specifically in such a violent like the Salvadoran. Likewise, it proposes a interdisciplinary approach, from the study of social representations. Realidad Empresarial No. 9, 2020: 25-40