Towards a Paradigm for Research on Social Representations

In this paper we develop a paradigm for research on social representations based on ideas that informed a study of modern biotechnology and the public (Durant, Bauer, Gaskell, 1998). Researching what the public thinks about such a new technology might be approached within a traditional attitudinal, risk perception, or audience reception framework. However, drawing inspiration from 'La psychanalyse, son image et son public' (Moscovici, 1961) we opted for the approach of social representations theory. We were persuaded that the conceptual richness of this theory was better suited to characterising the evolution of content, structure and functions of the voices and images of public concern, in response to the challenging developments in genetic engineering and modern biotechnology. Here we step back from our inquiry into biotechnology among European publics and reflect on the lessons for research on social representations, a phenomenon and concept of central concern to social psychology. Having decided to work within the framework of social representations, the contemporary researcher finds relatively little guidance on the implications of the theory for the design of empirical research. Breakwell & Canter (1993) note that almost every method known to the social sciences has been used in the study of social representations. While methodological pluralism may be virtuous, when a theory apparently embraces a range of approaches from ethnography to experimentation, of data sources from pictures to attitude scales, and analytic procedures from qualitative interpretation to multi-dimensional scaling, without an explicit rationale, virtue looks more like an absence of conceptual clarity. The methodologically more coherent proposals of Doise, Clemence & LorenziCioldi (1993) to operationalise aspects of social representation in terms of multivariate statistical procedures, has the advantage of opening common ground with traditional attitude research, but in so doing may constrain the development of social representations theory by limiting it to the interpretation of quantitative analysis. If research on social representations is to progress and live up to the promise of the theory, what is required is an elaboration and clarification of the key conceptual distinctions, and a discussion of their implications for the conduct of research; this is what we attempt in this paper. The paper starts with an interpretation of a classical study in the tradition of social representations followed by a discussion of how this approach leads to a different framing of research areas, such as on the 'public understanding of science'. We then discuss the problem of representation and the ' iconoclastic suspicion', leading to a definition of elements of an ideal type study. Seven implications for research on social representations are elaborated. These implications serve as a guide for the design and evaluation of research in this theoretical tradition.