Collective symbolic coping with new technology: Knowledge, images and public discourse

Abstract

Using data from policy analyses, media analyses and a European-wide survey about public perceptions of biotechnology conducted in 1996 and again in 1999, it is shown how a country's public develops an everyday understanding of a new technology (genetic modification) construed as potentially harmful by the media. To understand the reliance on images and related beliefs, we propose a theory of collective symbolic coping. It identifies four steps: first, the creation of awareness; second, production of divergent images; third, convergence upon a couple of dominant images in the public sphere; fourth, normalization. It is suggested that symbolic coping occurs in countries where a recent increase in policy activity and of media reporting has alerted the public; that this public show a high proportion of beliefs in menacing images; that these beliefs are relatively independent of pre-existing popular science knowledge; and that they are functionally equivalent to scientific knowledge in providing judgmental confidence and reducing self-ascribed ignorance. These propositions are shown to be true in Austria and Greece. Several implications of the theory are discussed, including social representation theory and public understanding of science.

Things in Culture, Culture in Things

“…Feelings of fear and disgust on the one hand, and optimistic hopes on the other, were evoked and contrasted in public debate. This was an initial stage of collective symbolic coping (Wagner et al 2002) with a particular technological novelty − diverse image construction in order to make sense of the new phenomenon. Now, sixteen years after the Dolly the sheep story, mammal cloning has become more normal and no longer evokes public emotion.…”

“…Further development of representation proceeds through the selection of a narrower set of images and ideas and to the fixation of more stable social representations. This is accompanied by the normalization of the novelty (Wagner et al 2002). Human cloning is apparently a polemic representation that evokes controversial feelings in different groups.…”

“…Technological innovations that enter into public use evoke similar representational activity. Processes of collective symbolic coping consist of four stages: 1. the creation of awareness of a new challenging phenomenon, 2. production of divergent images of it, 3. convergence upon a couple of dominant images in the public sphere, and 4. normalization (Wagner et al 2002).…”

The Conspiratorial Style in Lay Economic Thinking

“…Traumatic collective events like economic crises need to be assimilated by the groups that experience them, what can be done by constructing a cause [49]. Built on social representation theory [62,63], the Collective Symbolic Coping model [64] describes how social groups make sense of the appearance of threats to the social order (i.e., earthquakes, disease outbreaks, etc. ), in order to collectively cope with the resulting anxiety.…”

Where Are We Going? Perspective on Hindu–Muslim Relations in India

“…However, the same processes can be turned on their head. Referential points of anchoring derived from syncretic cultures and the use of collective symbolic coping (Wagner, Kronberger, & Seifert, 2002) can help to overcome interethnic divide. Once identified, these referential points may help in promoting an integrative process that may lead to the formation of a syncretic plural society which is based on the strong foundation of a multilayered identity, where religion is considered a factor, amongst many others, on which identity pivots itself (Tripathi, 2005).…”