Argumentation in participant-driven photo interviews: A case in ICT for development in Mozambique

Semiotica ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 (220) ◽  
pp. 173-198
Author(s):  
Silvia De Ascaniis ◽  
Sara Vannini ◽  
Lorenzo Cantoni

AbstractArgumentation is essentially dialogical, hence based on verbal disputation. Nonetheless, other semiotic resources than language may play a substantial role in argumentative circumstances. In this article, different argumentative functions played by photographs are explored, based on an unusual corpus for the field. People working in Mozambican Community Multimedia Centers (CMCs) were interviewed, in order to reconstruct the social meaning they confer to such places. To facilitate the exchange of meanings between interviewees and interviewers, who had different cultural and experiential backgrounds, interviewees were requested to take pictures of something they liked, something they didn’t like, and something they perceived as particularly representative of their CMC. Pictures were then presented and commented by participants during their interview. By means of analytical reconstructions, the major argumentative roles played by photographs in the interviews were identified, as well as their semiotic function in respect to interviewees’ words. Argumentative analysis also broadened and enriched the method of photo-driven interviews, and added a further interpretative access to analysis of social representations.

2002 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Tafani ◽  
Lionel Souchet

This research uses the counter-attitudinal essay paradigm ( Janis & King, 1954 ) to test the effects of social actions on social representations. Thus, students wrote either a pro- or a counter-attitudinal essay on Higher Education. Three forms of counter-attitudinal essays were manipulated countering respectively a) students’ attitudes towards higher education; b) peripheral beliefs or c) central beliefs associated with this representation object. After writing the essay, students expressed their attitudes towards higher education and evaluated different beliefs associated with it. The structural status of these beliefs was also assessed by a “calling into question” test ( Flament, 1994a ). Results show that behavior challenging either an attitude or peripheral beliefs induces a rationalization process, giving rise to minor modifications of the representational field. These modifications are only on the social evaluative dimension of the social representation. On the other hand, when the behavior challenges central beliefs, the same rationalization process induces a cognitive restructuring of the representational field, i.e., a structural change in the representation. These results and their implications for the experimental study of representational dynamics are discussed with regard to the two-dimensional model of social representations ( Moliner, 1994 ) and rationalization theory ( Beauvois & Joule, 1996 ).


1999 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 201-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claude Flament

This paper is concerned by a possible articulation between the diversity of individual opinions and the existence of consensus in social representations. It postulates the existence of consensual normative boundaries framing the individual opinions. A study by questionnaire about the social representations of the development of intelligence gives support to this notion.


2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 233-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Bonetto ◽  
Fabien Girandola ◽  
Grégory Lo Monaco

Abstract. This contribution consists of a critical review of the literature about the articulation of two traditionally separated theoretical fields: social representations and commitment. Besides consulting various works and communications, a bibliographic search was carried out (between February and December, 2016) on various databases using the keywords “commitment” and “social representation,” in the singular and in the plural, in French and in English. Articles published in English or in French, that explicitly made reference to both terms, were included. The relations between commitment and social representations are approached according to two approaches or complementary lines. The first line follows the role of commitment in the representational dynamics: how can commitment transform the representations? This articulation gathers most of the work on the topic. The second line envisages the social representations as determinants of commitment procedures: how can these representations influence the effects of commitment procedures? This literature review will identify unexploited tracks, as well as research perspectives for both areas of research.


Author(s):  
Virgínia Xavier Pereira da Silva ◽  
Raquel de Souza Ramos ◽  
Olga Veloso da Silva Oliveira ◽  
Lailah Maria Pinto Nunes ◽  
Sergio Correa Marques ◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (Supplement_5) ◽  
Author(s):  
M Winckler ◽  
F Zioni ◽  
G Johson

Abstract Background This study aims to analyse the social representations of health needs in a Brazilian municipality, questioning the capacity that public policies developed and implemented by the Brazilian Health System (SUS) had to meet these needs. Methods Qualitative case study in which the data were analysed by: 1) the Health Needs Taxonomy (Matsumoto, 1999), as an instrument for assessing health needs, formatting the interview guide and organizing the empirical data; 2) the Theory of Social Representations (Jovchelovitch, 2000), to capture health needs; 3) Content Analysis (Bardin, 2004), as an instrument of analysis and comparison of perceived needs. The methodological path used was the same in the two moments in which this research is based (2009 and 2016). The entire municipal territory was analyzed and 26 representatives of civil society organizations were interviewed. Results Based on the results given, we state that health is a permanent and timeless need, but the mediations for its satisfaction have changed historically. The interface between quantitative indicators and subjectivity in assessing needs reveals the authoritarian architecture of its decision-making process, which has ruined the necessary democracy for prioritising and meeting those needs. The asymmetrical relationships present in the Brazilian society have both undermined the collective character of health needs and promoted the distance between who care and who are cared for. Most of the priorities listed by the interviewees in 2009 remain composing the social context of the municipality in 2016. Conclusions The challenges for comprehensive health care remain critical given both the decrease in popular political participation and in institutional spaces, which leads to the annulment of the right to a universal health. Interdisciplinary and participatory diagnostics remain essential to understand the complexity of social changes and the challenges for the consolidation of meeting health needs. Key messages The capacity that public policies developed and implemented by the Brazilian Health System (SUS) had to meet these needs. The challenges for meeting health needs remain critical given both the decrease in political participation and in institutional spaces, which leads to the annulment of the right to a universal health.


2021 ◽  
pp. 193672442098296
Author(s):  
Bernardeau-Moreau Denis

Our article addresses disability as a social construct. More precisely, our intention is to see to what degree practices and exchange and interaction situations operate on social representations of physical disability in professional environments. Our aim is to provide some elements for reflection with regard to the imagined issues of physical disability in the workplace by focusing, in particular, on the social representations that they trigger among employees and managers who work with disabled colleagues on a day-to-day basis.


2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Betsy Rymes ◽  
Gareth Smail

AbstractThis paper examines the different ways that professional experts and everyday language users engage in scaling practices to claim authority when they talk about multilingual practices and the social significance they assign to them. Specifically, we compare sociolinguists’ use of the term translanguaging to describe multilingual and multimodal practices to the diverse observations of amateur online commentators, or citizen sociolinguists. Our analysis focuses on commentary on cross-linguistic communicative practices in Wales, or “things Welsh people say.” We ultimately argue that by calling practices “translanguaging” and defaulting to scaled-up interpretations of multilingual communication, sociolinguists are increasingly missing out on analyses of how the social meaning of (cross)linguistic practices accrues and evolves within specific communities over time. By contrast, the fine-grained perceptions of “citizen sociolinguists” as they discuss their own communicative practices in context may have something unique and underexamined to offer us as researchers of communicative diversity.


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