Chapter 12: Social Representations

Uwe Flick & Juliet Foster

Social representations Since its inception and elaboration by Moscovici (1961, 1963) over 45 years ago, the theory of social representations has become an important framework for researchers all over the world. ‘Social Representations’ is neither a label for a methodological approach nor for a method. The term ‘Social Representations’ denominates a research perspective, which originates from social psychology, but in the meantime has also been adopted in other areas of research. The initial study of social representations (Moscovici, 1961) was a quantitative content analysis of the press combined with a representative survey, and a more experimental tradition of studying social representations has developed, too. However, very early, a qualitative tradition of social representations research began with Herzlich's (1968/1973) study of representations of health, based on interviews with a smaller but focused sample. Thus the research perspective of social representations is not necessarily linked to qualitative research, but for many issues ...

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