Environmental problems today represent a growing challenge with profound impacts on rural communities, biodiversity, and traditional livelihoods. In response, local solutions emerge that seek to mitigate or adapt to ecological consequences, which vary over time. The objective of this study was to analyze the social representations of environmental problems and solutions, examining their temporal evolution across three cohorts within a sample of rural population. Methodologically, an exploratory approach to social representations was adopted, using a mixed-method strategy with a repeated cross-sectional trend design. Trends were examined among 169 rural participants corresponding to the years 2019, 2020, and 2022, using non-probabilistic convenience sampling through a questionnaire. Additionally, a co-occurrence analysis of codes for open-ended questions regarding environmental problems was used to enhance understanding of the representations. As for the results, the significant and stable problem identified was climate change, understood as a highly abstract issue that is difficult to address. On the other hand, among the solutions, environmental education predominated, showing statistically significant growth in its relevance. In contrast, the absence of changes in rural lifestyles-such as reducing meat consumption or ceasing the use of firewood for heating-reveals difficulties in modifying rural ways of living. In conclusion, the study underscores the need to strengthen environmental education in rural areas, both in formal and non-formal contexts, and to deepen the understanding of climate change at the rural level, considering practical and applied approaches.
While collective change is necessary to prevent and adapt to ecosystem degradation (Dugast & Soyeux, 2019), social psychology has mainly taken an individualized approach to studying environmental issues (Batel et al., 2016). In this article, we seek a broader approach, exploring social change in relation to environmental movements through the lens of the theories of active minorities and social representations in dialogue with the field of political ecology. Taking a political ecology perspective allows us to contextualize environmental issues within the power relations (around class, gender, ethnicity, etc.) inherent in current social arrangements. We present the contributions and limitations of the theories of active minorities and social representations to the study of social change, highlighting the connections between these two theories and political ecology. They share some ontological (agency of subject), epistemological (change), and processual (conflict) affinities, and we argue they can complement each other to provide a comprehensive analytical framework for understanding social change related to the environment. An illustration of how they can be applied is provided through a critical reading of a social psychology article examining how environmental movements exert minority influence.
This study investigates the meaning-making processes surrounding the concept of democracy on Brazilian formerly Twitter, through an integrated approach combining Social Representations Theory (SRT) and Social Network Analysis (SNA). We analyzed 1,508 tweets and retweets from 219 federal politicians, along with 332,624 retweets from the general public between August and September 2021, a period marked by widespread political mobilization and polarization. The results reveal two antagonistic representational systems of democracy: one rooted in institutional protection and social rights, and the other framed around popular sovereignty and distrust of traditional democratic institutions. Both sides symbolically legitimize their positions through appeals to "democracy," often deploying the term to justify conflicting and, at times, anti-democratic actions. The study also demonstrates how digital platforms amplify political discourse and group identity through semantic cohesion and algorithmic visibility. By integrating SRT and SNA, we offer a methodological contribution to the psychosocial analysis of political communication, enabling a nuanced understanding of how representations of democracy are produced, circulated, and contested in networked publics.
This text is a reflection on the article "The sidewalk, waste and garbage collection: practices and representations of an 'in-between place'" by Lusson & Breux, seen from the angle of the tripartite ego-alter-object gaze proposed by Moscovici. This framework enables us to explore the relationships between these three elements in understanding the "sidewalk" as a social object. After outlining the aims of the article and the concepts used to achieve them, an analysis is proposed on the role of social representations of the sidewalk in the issues of spatial appropriation and social struggle. This analysis leads us to reconsider this geographical work within the framework of social and environmental psychology, introducing new theoretical perspectives on socio-spatial segregation and socio-cognitive representations.
This introduction presents spatial representations as social and symbolic constructs informed by everyday practices, social relationships and cultural contexts. Initially studied from a biophysical and cognitive angle, these representations have been increasingly subjected to a socio-spatial approach that emphasizes the meanings social groups attribute to places. This body of research, which emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, draws on the social representations paradigm, combined with ethnographic approaches featuring socio-spatial representations. Far from simple mental representation tools, the maps used by these researchers play a central mediating role, enabling the exploration of collective memories, social identification processes and inter-group relationships. This interdisciplinary framework is used to analyse and understand individuals' relationships to their surroundings, often in connection with current social and environmental concerns, shedding light on the ways in which groups construct and share the spatial, identity and symbolic meanings of their relationships to the places where they live.
This article looks at the production of symbolic boundaries in San Gregorio Atlapulco, an ancient village located in a peripheral area of Mexico City that is undergoing major urban change and environmental predation. It presents the point of view of inhabitants who claim to be 'natives' of San Gregorio, taking as its angle of approach their pedestrian mobilities and the social representations expressed in these practices. These representations are identified from mental maps produced in workshops with groups of residents. The article examines the relevance of mental maps for understanding the representations deployed in a practice as versatile as walking, and the relevance of the representational approach for understanding what 'really' happens in everyday interactions.
The aim of this article is to grasp the nature of the representations generated by the sidewalk and to understand how they relate to the work of the garbage collector. Viewing the sidewalk as a place of various expectations reflected by its design, this article analyzes the way in which the representations of the sidewalk do or do not convey expectations of garbage collectors, and how garbage collectors are working with these expectations. Using a methodology that mixes press review and in situ observation, this article shows that the sidewalk is an "in-between-place" that is constantly being redefined. For residents, it is both an appropriated and a rejected place at once as well as a place of control, particularly over the work of garbage collectors. For the latter, the sidewalk is the site where most of their work invariably takes place, yet where that same work is undermined and frustrated with constraints. The challenges encountered by garbage workers consist in large part of the constraints posed by contemporary street furniture.
The article sets out to study socio-spatial representations of seaside areas using an international and intergroup approach. Specifically, we have attempted to identify forms of appropriation of place and their contribution to the process of identity construction. Research was carried out in France and Iceland. Despite the differences in geoclimatic conditions and lifestyles of local populations in these two countries, they share a strong sense of attachment to the sea and coast. In order to study socio-spatial representations, a qualitative survey (semi-structured interviews and cognitive maps) was conducted with 48 inhabitants. The interview guide focuses on four themes relating to respondents' life territories: representation of the life territory, individual personal history, elements of change, and relationships between individuals or groups. Evaluation grids were constructed to process the maps manually and analyse the comments made during the interviews. The findings show predominantly cartographic representations. However, there was a significantly greater number of these representations in France than in Iceland, where other forms of spatial representation of the territory were also observed, thus suggesting a different relationship to space. Furthermore, these representations of territories varied according to the origins of the respondents (native to the area, non-native to the area) as is evidenced by the drawings. These contrasts reflect different cultural representations of the territory stemming from a different relationship with time and space.
Studies on the social representations of Covid-19 can make important scholarly and practical contributions such as favouring the understanding of social thought about the emergence of a pandemic and its impacts on different groups and providing insight for the planning of communication about health and health education. Longitudinal studies on the social representations of infectious diseases are scarce. The present study is a longitudinal investigation of the social representations of Covid-19 constructed by middle-class Brazilian adults. We conducted semi structured interviews with seven participants at three different moments during the pandemic, April-May 2020, September 2020, and May-June 2021, totaling 21 interviews. We analysed the textual data with the Top-Down Hierarchical Classification provided by the software Iramuteq. The results show that participants initially represented Covid-19 as a radical transformation of the world based on spiritual, divine, or teleological explanations. With time, these beliefs became less prominent, and the participants represented Covid-19 as a normalised disease with specific symptoms. Science-based beliefs became more prominent with time. We discuss this transformation in the social representations of Covid-19 based on the articulation between social representations and social practices. We also discuss the othering process as a constant feature of the investigated representations and the ideological implications of this process.
The phenomenon of specialization among nursing categories can lead to difficulty in constructing a common professional identity and generate issues of professional adaptation. This study aims to explore the socio-professional representations of paramedical students and compare these representations among two categories of students. The research targets 695 undergraduate students in two programs: 'nursing care' (n= 562) and 'healthcare- techniques' (n=133), from three training institutes located in the Marrakech-Safi region of Morocco. Regarding the theoretical framework, this study uses the structural approach of social representations. Data are collected through free and hierarchical associations, analyzed through prototypical analyses, similarity analyses, and a Chi-squared test. The results emphasize heterogeneous representations, with shared elements and others specific to each group. Nursing students characterize the nursing profession as laborious and stressful. Nurses are described as autonomous individuals demonstrating professional values and interpersonal qualities. For students in the healthcare technicians' group, the representation focuses primarily on clinical practice concepts. The hospital appears, for this group, as a privileged environment for care practice. It is therefore incumbent upon various stakeholders in the nursing education field to consider the representative structures held by students in the course of their training and to implement strategies to minimize potential representational divergences.
Goffman (1959) posits that individuals are performers, maintaining a "front" depending on social contexts they navigate. Highly institutionalized roles, such as that of a judge, involve a front pre-established by law or social expectations. The role of a judge as prepared by the law entails the performance of dignity. Goffman believes that this front is collectively represented and takes on a factual existence. Employing Moscovici's (1961) social representations theory and Abric's (2005) hierarchical evocation method, we explore the representation of a judge's dignity among practicing lawyers. This study delves into the performative aspect of the role of a judge as a character in a performance of a trial. Our findings highlight a dramatic persona of a dignified judge, characterized by specific appearance and manner, and setting used to objectify the judge's dignity.
We tested key predictions of a recent theoretical model positing social representations (SRs) as cognitive-emotional processes.The model aimsto examine the impact of emotions on the dynamics of SRs. The present researchinvestigatesthe first two phases of the model from the central core theory (CCT). The study of the impact of emotional experience on the dynamics of SRs could be a way to provide some support to theoriginal assumption in Social Representations Theory (SRT) that SRs are dynamic objects of social change. This attempt seems crucial as SRs are essential to the construction of social knowledge. One hundred and thirty management students had to recall highly positive and negative emotions immediately after participating in a three-day teamwork situation. Having previously identified students' (gendered) SRs of teamwork, the study examines individual tensions following emotional experience,that is,the cognitive impact of the nature (positive or negative)of emotion on the internal dynamics of the SR object. Highlighting the fundamental role of the meaning-generative function of SRs, the results showed variationsofSR componentsof teamwork depending on the valence of emotion, the status of SR components, and gender as a sociocultural variable. We interpret gender differences on the variations ofSR componentsof teamwork following emotional experience as reflecting social positioning vis-& agrave;-vis the meaning of this object as a shared cultural reality. Our findings are discussed considering the support they offer to the model, how the nature of emotions can produce contrasting SRs dynamics and suggested theoretical implications about the place that should be given to emotions in SRT.
In recent years, the study of social representations through images, icons, drawings, and the like, has attracted the attention of researchers interested in analyzing the role visual devices play in the elaboration and interpretation of Social Representations and Social Imaginary. Along the same lines, in this paper we study some visual elements that can provide relevant information for exploring and reconstructing social representations. These visual units are called Memes "units of popular culture that are circulated, im itated, and transformed by individual Internet users, creating a shared cultural experience in the process" (Shifman, 2013, p. 367); they generate and shape the mindsets and significant forms of behavior and actions of a social group. Memes spread a particular idea as presented in images, animated GIFs, videos, written text, or some other units of cultural practices. They give rise to the materialization of the expression of a given social reality within which individuals and social groups live which is why we consider them as useful tool for communicating and reconstructing social representations. During the COVID-19 confinement, many internet memes circulated but we decided to study those on remote learning and teaching since education in that period was a great challenge. The corpus of study was gathered by manually tagged searches on social media such as Facebook, Reddit and Twitter using the following hashtags: #virtualeducation , #remoteteaching , #pandemicandschool . The internet memes analyzed show the difficulties students faced when they were confronted with remote teaching and the emotional states they experienced. These expressions and meanings allow us to reconstruct the social representation they have of this modality of teaching.
Reflecting on the legal relationship between the individual and the nation-state, citizenship has long been considered a framework consisting of rights and obligations. However, in the last two decades, it has become intertwined with individuals' meaningmaking processes of their social world as well as with the dynamics of constructing group boundaries and (re)producing the hierarchies between groups. In this paper, we will present how the lay representations of citizenship prevailed on social media through publicly sharing visuals after the issuance of an amendment for a regulation stating the new conditions for granting Turkish citizenship to foreigners. After thematically analyzing the tweets containing visuals with hashtags related to citizenship, which were sent within the six months following the amendment, we extracted two main themes of citizenship in Turkey as "legal boundaries" and "sentimental citizenship". The study enabled us to show how visuals are used to communicate the social and political aspects of citizenship that are represented around objective and subjective meanings while also indicating how the lay meanings of citizenship are utilized to reproduce the inequalities.
The article investigates images in communication processes as manifestations of social representations. Focusing on the conflict-affected society of Cyprus, it studies the images used in 76250 tweets related to the Cyprus problem during the intensification of the negotiations in the period between September 2016 - July 2017. Through social network visualisation we identify the most prominent images used to construct meaning about the Cyprus problem as well as the clusters created through the image tweeting. The results show that most of the images tweeted about the Cyprus problem are institutionalised manifestations of social representations that contribute to meanings that are not conducive to the peace process in Cyprus. They instead enhance the social imaginary of Cyprus being determined by a loop of unsuccessful peace efforts that are always distant from the grassroot of society and by the concept that a solution will arrive to Cyprus as an external force sourced from the political elites.
The visual image has been largely taking up the means of communication of postmodernity as an important communicational resource. By the same token, the theory of social representations (TSR) has assumed a privileged place in the study of mass communication, to grasp the relationship manners socially shared by subjects about determined objects. The goal of this research is to present a methodological composition with a visual image analysis that can be useful in the field of research about TSR. To this end, we regained the analysis of visual content through an associative model of Variables and Values, linking it to the premises of Barthesian semiotics, attesting that they are complementary methods. This methodological composition was applied to investigate the femininity representation in superhero comics, through the image of Wonder Woman. The results show the reaffirmation of traditional values naturalized in the representation of femininity, exhibiting only a few (and momentary) changes over the years.
The theory of social representations has offered a significant and nuanced theoretical framework to gather and interpret knowledge across a wide range of subjects and mediums in order to discuss how different social and material contexts are perceived for the purpose of providing a meaningful foundation to a given reality. The theory has been critiqued and expanded hugely to provide a rich source of intellectual enquiry within social psychology and beyond. However, one area that has received scant attention, is the significance of graphic imagery as a source of data from which to explore social representations within the public consciousness. As imagery in media and social media has become an extension of perceptions of a given social reality, this special issue aims to fill this gap to explore how the power of the image can reflect the diffusion of social representations across our often politicised social and cultural worlds.
Literary texts have recursively encountered social psychology and related disciplines, particularly in theoretical frameworks that focus on meaning-making such as the social representations perspective. The present study explores the relationships between text and context in a collection of short stories published in different languages: Women with Big Eyes by angeles Mastretta. The oeuvre was examined using lexicometric analyses, i.e., Reinert's Descending Hierarchical Analysis, in order to identify emerging worlds of meaning. From the three analysed versions (the original Spanish, the Italian, and the English translation), different lexical worlds are identified that likewise recreate the general idea of the book. However, interesting variations in meaning-making emerged, as grounded in specific cultural and linguistic contexts. The results appear to legitimise the use of literary texts in social psychological analyses, also in their translated versions, although with some caveat. The paper closes underscoring the importance of studying meaning-making in context, thus enhancing the potential of literary texts for research in social psychology and in related fields of knowledge.
The aim of this study is to examine how Istanbul is represented visually and verbally adopting the approach of Social Representations. A field study was carried out with 158 undergraduate students in Istanbul. A questionnaire form was administered in the first stage of study including questions about the demographic characteristics of participants, and their metaphors about Istanbul. The drawings as a visual technique were used in the second stage. The results were analyzed by inductive content analysis. The prominent themes in drawings were grouped as 'panorama of Istanbul,' 'problems of Istanbul,' and 'behaviors and appearances of residents in Istanbul.' The results of metaphor analysis revealed the following salient themes: 'contrasts,' 'diversities,' and 'problems.' The social representations of Istanbul are influenced by its socio-cultural diversity, spatial properties, historical background, problems, people's daily activities there.
