Social Representations and Mass Communication Research

Abstract

Apparently, things are clear. Social representations are shared, by definition. How do they acquire this property? Through communications of any nature, which spread them and finally allow them to settle. And given that mass communications affect, by definition too, a great number of people, they constitute the most important means of spread and settlement. It is not surprising then that the question of the relations between mass communications and social representations was addressed as early as in Moscovici's seminal work about psychoanalysis (1961). This question is not an extension of the theory of social representations to a new or marginal domain, but concerns its very foundations. For in fact the theory does not consider the media as mere distributors of stimuli which reach out more or less indiscriminately to everyone in contemporary societies. It is not content with just a description of appearances, it seeks to analyse their underlying logic.Moscovici made a distinction between three communication systems in our societies, which he called propaganda, propagation and diffusion. The first aims to control opinion, typically in political matters; it always depends upon an institution of power and appears in a polemic context where several groups confront one another. War, of course, but also the regular functioning of modern democracies amply illustrate it. Propagation is developed as an instrument of regulation of beliefs and attitudes in a particular population, especially when it is confronted by new questions. A canonic example is that of the attempts by the Catholic Church to assimilate or interpret elements of modernity, notably with regard to economic or moral matters. Finally, diffusion minimizes social and ideological differences to unite the greatest number in an unspecialized mode of thinking; the high circulation newspapers in most developed nations are a typical example of this.The main interest of those distinctions is to present mass media in terms of stem, that is of objective and functional constraints in which individuals as receivers and the media as producers are bound to a historical situation. From there, the description of mass communications in terms of stimuli or even of messages apt to be "received" by everyone appears singularly poor. Likewise, these distinctions show that speaking of mass communications in a general way

Editorial Political Cartoons in Australia: Social Representations & and the Visual Depiction of Essentialism

“…Media communications are underpinned by representational systems and because the producers and the readers reside within the same historicity, these communications are, arguably, bi-directional co-constructions (Rouquette 1996;Wagner et al 2009). …”

Theory and Method of Social Representations

“…Although the dynamics of this discourse are still poorly understood (Rouquette, 1996), there are some hints in an early study by Moscovici (1976). When he investigated the public understanding of psychoanalysis in France in the 1950s, Moscovici identified three distinct forms of media discourse by the style the press reported and commented on this relatively new psychological theory.…”

Using social representations theory to make sense of climate change: what scientists and nonscientists in Australia think

“…As a disseminated product, media communication is often perceived to be unidirectional: that is, it is often assumed that the producers of the media disseminate the news to the receivers of the media. However, mass media communications are underpinned by representational systems, and because the producers and the receivers reside within the same historicity, both the producers and receivers construct and receive media communications (Rouquette 1996, Moloney 2007. These shared representations are situated between stasis and transition; they are dynamic and malleable, making them susceptible to influence by those who have the agency and resources to proliferate one version of events over others (Jovchelovitch 1997, Wagner 1998, Moloney 2007).…”