... problematicità. Dai brevi accenni qui riportati, appare evidente come il discorso ambientale ... more ... problematicità. Dai brevi accenni qui riportati, appare evidente come il discorso ambientale sia costruito prevalentemente a partire da un ambiente inteso dinamicamente come oggetto di cambiamenti o come processo. Sono ...
... Lo Guxerlu dd Merxgiorno is the only regional daily newspaper; it is considered a popular pap... more ... Lo Guxerlu dd Merxgiorno is the only regional daily newspaper; it is considered a popular paper ... There are also more evaluative modalities, which are all positively oriented (for example, the references to positive opinions of the journalist and to the positive uses of computers). ...
This study draws on the tradition of Social Representations theory (RSs), and is attentive to the... more This study draws on the tradition of Social Representations theory (RSs), and is attentive to the interplay of media communication and cultural systems. Under the hypothesis of a return to videocracy and unidirectional communication marginalizing citizens, we explored representations of the 2008 election campaign in the Italian press. We selected three newspapers diversified by ideological orientations and analysed news headlines and texts. The grid of content analysis focused on variables like: the extent of news mediatization, leaderization processes, politics vs. policies, and use of political polls, among others, all variables referred to left, centre and right parties. Data were processed using SPAD-T for both descriptive and differential analysis, with the latter identifying elements characterizing each newspaper (VOSPEC). Results confirm the primacy of television and a shift of attention to leaders of all opposing forces, with the left associated with politics and the right with policies. Moreover, we found a coverage bias favouring centre-right exposition and sidelining citizens.
Under the hypothesis that media communication plays a key role in the production of meanings link... more Under the hypothesis that media communication plays a key role in the production of meanings linked to the broader value and belief system, the present pilot study explores the evolution of representations of the international women's day in the daily press. Drawing on the database of the Camera dei Deputati, the analysis of news about March 8 was undertaken. Through the identification of the following keywords: "woman/women's feast", "March 8" and "mimosa/e", a total of 129 articles was selected from 24 newspapers, diversified by ideological-cultural orientation. Privileging a triangulation model, textual data related to the headlines words and content variables, and extratextual data related to typographic variables (such as sex of the author, newspaper, year) were analysed. With reference to the content analysis, a table was constructed on the basis of the Linguistic Category Model (Semin, 2007). This was applied to identify the presence of a...
Riassunto L'indagine parte da un interesse per la politica movimentista ed è inquadrata nella... more Riassunto L'indagine parte da un interesse per la politica movimentista ed è inquadrata nella tradizione delle rappresenta-zioni sociali. Attraverso un'analisi lessicografica dei titoli di tre quotidiani, con diverso orientamento ideologico-culturale, si sono esplorate le rappresentazioni del maggio Sessantotto. L'individuazione dei 1056 titoli è avvenuta rilevando parole-chiave quali movimento studentesco, maggio '68, presenti nei titoli di Paese Sera, Il Corriere della Sera, Il Tempo, controllati dal 1° maggio al 30 giugno 1968. L'elaborazione statistica ha utilizzato tappe dif-ferenziate dello Spad-t. La procedura VOSPEC ha consentito l'individuazione dei lemmi caratteristici dei tre quo-tidiani, mentre la tappa Corbit ha permesso l'esplorazione delle dimensioni latenti relative alle variabili categoriali e ai lemmi dei titoli. Il vocabolario, dopo la tappa delle equivalenze e la scelta di una soglia di frequenza ≥ 3, è di 7795 parole, di cui 1238 dive...
Terrorism has been increasingly viewed as a complex phenomenon imbued with political objectives a... more Terrorism has been increasingly viewed as a complex phenomenon imbued with political objectives and media interests. From this perspective, it is crucial to understand how terrorism is socially represented and the role the media plays in creating and molding its image. Using four scales, this study explores the following issues as they relate to normal populations who have no link to terrorism: (1) Terrorist Definitions; (2) Attitudes, Beliefs and Experiences of Terrorism; (3) Immediate Impact of Terrorism; and (4) perceived positive or negative role of the media. Moreover, the study analyzes the role of political orientation and the need for cognitive closure (NFC) in shaping one’s representations of terrorism. The sample consists of 409 Italian respondents. Four analyses of main components were conducted. Subsequently, a secondorder factor analysis of all four scales generated a three-factor solution that accounts for 51% of the variance. Finally, a correlational analysis of political orientation, NFC, and representations of terrorists and terrorism was performed. Results suggest that more conservative participants, who exhibited a higher NFC, view terrorists as psychologically deviant and criminal. By contrast, leftwing participants, with a lower NFC, view terrorism as a complex phenomenon linked to politics of fear and discrimination. These participants view the media as having a negative role relating to the perpetuation of terrorism. Keywords: representations of terrorists; terrorism; media role; social psychological perspective; political orientation; NFC
This article, which is set in the historical-critical tradition, is divided into three parts. The... more This article, which is set in the historical-critical tradition, is divided into three parts. The first part deals with the different possible ways of making history, both in general terms – with a marked attention to Nietzsche and Foucault’s points of view analysed in relation to the traditional ones – and in the psychological field. The second part refers to some fundamental elements of the historiographical debate concerning social psychology, with a particular emphasis on the disputes arisen from Gordon Allport’s historical chapter on the background of modern social psychology which was published in 1954 in Lindzey’s Handbook of Social Psychology. The third part draws on the results of a survey aimed at exploring the role played by some key issues, provided by Allport’s chapter, in the international scientific communication conveyed by the ‘Psychological literature’ from 1887 to 1954. Some ‘founding myths’ of the discipline are brought into question by the analysis of the survey’s main results: in particular, the myth supporting the idea of an Anglophone and entirely individuocentric social psychology, or that of an entirely sociocentric European tradition, and that of social psychology’s limited applicative disposition
Establishing social psychology as a distinct field of study has been the object of heated debate ... more Establishing social psychology as a distinct field of study has been the object of heated debate over the first decades of the 20th century. Entrenched in different theoretical
traditions, such as philosophy, sociology, psychology, and criminology, the development of the conceptual boundaries of social psychology as an autonomous science was the result of a historic effort. Resulting from a negotiation process between competing stances, some voices relevant to the identity construction of social psychology have been lost over time. Within the framework of a “polycentric” historical perspective
valorizing local histories, the present study aims to scrutinize those early voices, which were later marginalized. To this scope, we conducted a narrative analysis on the first volumes explicitly naming social psychology in their titles and identified the main themes, conceptual frameworks, and scientific advancements. The analysis illustrates the work of Gualtiero Sarfatti and articulates his forgotten contribution to drawing
social psychology as a distinct discipline, built on the scientific method and positioned within the psychological sociocentric tradition. Our analysis reveals the leading role of Sarfatti in the disciplinary foundation of social psychology as a psychological science based on the concept of social psyche. Yet despite the fact his contribution was influential in the scholarly community of his time, our work highlights how his voice vanished from the subsequent disciplinary developments to date, and suggests some explanations behind this neglect.
Keywords: critical history, forerunners of Italian social psychology, narrative analysis
SEXIST LANGUAGE AND WOMEN’S REPRESENTATIONS IN
JOURNALISTIC COMMUNICATION ABOUT FEMALE MINISTERS
... more SEXIST LANGUAGE AND WOMEN’S REPRESENTATIONS IN JOURNALISTIC COMMUNICATION ABOUT FEMALE MINISTERS OF THE PRODI (2006) AND BERLUSCONI (2008) GOVERNMENTS. A SOCIAL-PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS ON HEADLINES OF THE ITALIAN PRESS WITH DIFFERENT CULTURAL AND IDEOLOGICAL ORIENTATION The study focuses on media representations of ten women ministers in two different Italian governments - six ministers of the center-left government led by Prodi in 2006 (Bindi, Bonino, Lanzillotta, Melandri, Pollastrini, Turco) and four ministers of the center-right led by Berlusconi in 2008 (Carfagna, Gelmini, Meloni, Prestigiacomo). These representations, monitored in 514 news headlines from five Italian newspapers (L’Unità, La Repubblica, Il Corriere della Sera, Il Tempo, Il Giornale), were analyzed according to a twofold comparative perspective centered on the role of ministers’ political affiliations and on the role of the source ideological and cultural orientation. The study also examines the use of sexist language by detecting the generic masculine and the specific feminine applied to the ministers. Textual data were processed with different steps of the statistical package SPAD- T for the analysis of the vocabulary and the lexicographic characterization of headlines relating to the ten ministers and the five daily papers in two years. In the analysis of the sexist language we found an over-utilization of the masculine generic by all dailies and a few cases of feminine specific, mainly by the left and center-left dailies. The language under observation was interpreted as a site of production, reproduction and dissemination of representations strongly permeated by gender stereotypes. Through this study, we have shown that these stereotypes, operating in a political context in which the role of women is still very marginal, contribute to crystallize women’s marginality, rather than providing incentives to overcome it and pave the way for greater women’s participation in politics. Keywords: sexist language, social representations and gender stereotypes, media, women in politics.
Women ministers of center-left (2006) and center-right (2008) in Italian daily press:
political c... more Women ministers of center-left (2006) and center-right (2008) in Italian daily press: political communication and gender representations The research is framed in the tradition of social representations with particular reference to the media role and language. The object of investigation is to explore the political communication dedicated to the nine women ministers of the center-left government in 2006 (six) and center-right government in 2008 (four) and its possible correspondence with the representations self-reported by Italian women involved in politics. The aims are to highlight: 1) the existence of gender stereotypical traits considered masculine or feminine (eg. competitiveness vs. collaborativeness, independence vs. dependence, assertiveness vs. liabilities, etc.); 2) the reference to internal obstacles (no leadership, low self-esteem and self-efficacy, etc.) and 3) external (glass ceiling theory, labyrinth theory, no quotas for women, etc.) in the careers of women ministers; 4) the use of a more abstract or more concrete language to describe the characteristics/activities of women ministers according to the LCM (Semin e Fiedler, 1988); 5) the use of language which gives/takes away visibility to the female genre of ministers (eg., male generic or female specific). The material under consideration is composed of 175 articles published in five Italian newspapers (L’Unità, La Repubblica, Il Corriere della Sera, Il Tempo, Il Giornale). They were selected because they contained the names of women ministers in the titles. Each of the five points above has been transformed into content categories detected in the body of the article and reported in the form of lemmas (composed of the specific modality of the variable and of the Minister name) in a lexicographic files which contains also the words of the headlines. By the MOTS step of the statistical program SPAD-T were obtained frequencies of general vocabulary consisting of words relating to headlines and to content variables. The results allow to discuss the differences in language and content in general, with respect to the ten women ministers, and in comparison with the representations self-reported by Italian women politician. Keywords: gender stereotypes, sexist language, analysis on newspapers, content analysis, lexicographical analysis, representations of women in politics [203-230].
The present study embraces the critical traditions of &am... more The present study embraces the critical traditions of "New History" and of social representations theory articulated with the mainstream historiographical tradition of a bibliometric approach. The historical analysis deals with the early representations of Italian social psychology articulated and disseminated by some of the main Italian scientific-cultural and philosophical journals. We examined seven journals published between 1875 and 1954, and gathered 2,030 texts dealing with the various forms of social and collective psychology. We have applied a grid of content analysis whose data have been transcribed to a numerical file. At the same time, we have created a textual file containing the titles of the contributions as well as the names of the authors and scholars reviewed. The two files have been processed by SPAD-T for a correspondence analysis in which both lexical data and category variables have been considered as active variables. Through the scree-test, two factors that explain 18.90% of the variance have been singled out. Their combination has produced a factorial plan able to highlight three distinct areas differently characterized from journals and years. The results are also discussed with regard to the contextual historical frame.
The research explores some differential elements of representations of Jubilee and of the city of... more The research explores some differential elements of representations of Jubilee and of the city of Rome in relation to semantic-lexical production that are hypothesised to characterise those psychologically deeper aspects of representations. The subjects are 292 high school students, contacted in: may-june 1998. The questionnaire utilised is differently articulated in order to collect informations about: level of familiarity in front of contents and symbols of Events, attitudes, etc..., and semantic production around the 22 stimulus-words: like ENVIRONMENT, CHURCH OF SAN PIETRO, etc. Data were analysed using the statistical package SPAD-T with particular reference for MOCAR step. Referring to the analysis of textual data, lexical characterisations of groups built from the social-cultural profile of level of religiosity were individualised. The results are discussed in terms of typical discourse built around semantic-lexical production of each group.
Il presente lavoro prende l'avvio dai risultati di una serie di indagini volte ad esplorare le ra... more Il presente lavoro prende l'avvio dai risultati di una serie di indagini volte ad esplorare le rappresentazioni dei disordini/rivolte nelle periferie francesi del novembre 2005 nella stampa quotidiana italiana. L'obiettivo di partenza era verificare se tali episodi fossero stati descritti in termini di azioni violente devianti o come movimenti politici di protesta, verificando al tempo stesso il ruolo ricoperto dall'orientamento politicoculturale della fonte. Così attraverso l'analisi degli articoli di diversi quotidiani si erano potute ricostruire le rappresentazioni delle violenze agite dai giovani francesi, descritti in alcuni casi come immigrati, in altri come teppisti, in altri ancora come giovani francesi emarginati. In proposito il dato interessante riguardava il rinvio trasversale, rispetto all'orientamento politico-ideologico della fonte, all'etichetta di "immigrato" per definire i rivoltosi. Esso si rivelava frutto di un vero e proprio bias comunicativo rifiutato dagli stessi protagonisti dei disordini che, intervistati in indagini sul campo, tenevano alla propria identità di giovani cittadini francesi (cfr. Cicchelli et al, 2008), dato, questo, più in generale sottolineato anche dalla letteratura sociologica su quegli eventi (cfr.
... A comparative study of the structure of attitudes toward computers, science, and technology w... more ... A comparative study of the structure of attitudes toward computers, science, and technology was ... To spend public money filling schools and public administration with useless computers ... Within field of study, humanities and psychology students have more negative and less ...
... problematicità. Dai brevi accenni qui riportati, appare evidente come il discorso ambientale ... more ... problematicità. Dai brevi accenni qui riportati, appare evidente come il discorso ambientale sia costruito prevalentemente a partire da un ambiente inteso dinamicamente come oggetto di cambiamenti o come processo. Sono ...
... Lo Guxerlu dd Merxgiorno is the only regional daily newspaper; it is considered a popular pap... more ... Lo Guxerlu dd Merxgiorno is the only regional daily newspaper; it is considered a popular paper ... There are also more evaluative modalities, which are all positively oriented (for example, the references to positive opinions of the journalist and to the positive uses of computers). ...
This study draws on the tradition of Social Representations theory (RSs), and is attentive to the... more This study draws on the tradition of Social Representations theory (RSs), and is attentive to the interplay of media communication and cultural systems. Under the hypothesis of a return to videocracy and unidirectional communication marginalizing citizens, we explored representations of the 2008 election campaign in the Italian press. We selected three newspapers diversified by ideological orientations and analysed news headlines and texts. The grid of content analysis focused on variables like: the extent of news mediatization, leaderization processes, politics vs. policies, and use of political polls, among others, all variables referred to left, centre and right parties. Data were processed using SPAD-T for both descriptive and differential analysis, with the latter identifying elements characterizing each newspaper (VOSPEC). Results confirm the primacy of television and a shift of attention to leaders of all opposing forces, with the left associated with politics and the right with policies. Moreover, we found a coverage bias favouring centre-right exposition and sidelining citizens.
Under the hypothesis that media communication plays a key role in the production of meanings link... more Under the hypothesis that media communication plays a key role in the production of meanings linked to the broader value and belief system, the present pilot study explores the evolution of representations of the international women's day in the daily press. Drawing on the database of the Camera dei Deputati, the analysis of news about March 8 was undertaken. Through the identification of the following keywords: "woman/women's feast", "March 8" and "mimosa/e", a total of 129 articles was selected from 24 newspapers, diversified by ideological-cultural orientation. Privileging a triangulation model, textual data related to the headlines words and content variables, and extratextual data related to typographic variables (such as sex of the author, newspaper, year) were analysed. With reference to the content analysis, a table was constructed on the basis of the Linguistic Category Model (Semin, 2007). This was applied to identify the presence of a...
Riassunto L'indagine parte da un interesse per la politica movimentista ed è inquadrata nella... more Riassunto L'indagine parte da un interesse per la politica movimentista ed è inquadrata nella tradizione delle rappresenta-zioni sociali. Attraverso un'analisi lessicografica dei titoli di tre quotidiani, con diverso orientamento ideologico-culturale, si sono esplorate le rappresentazioni del maggio Sessantotto. L'individuazione dei 1056 titoli è avvenuta rilevando parole-chiave quali movimento studentesco, maggio '68, presenti nei titoli di Paese Sera, Il Corriere della Sera, Il Tempo, controllati dal 1° maggio al 30 giugno 1968. L'elaborazione statistica ha utilizzato tappe dif-ferenziate dello Spad-t. La procedura VOSPEC ha consentito l'individuazione dei lemmi caratteristici dei tre quo-tidiani, mentre la tappa Corbit ha permesso l'esplorazione delle dimensioni latenti relative alle variabili categoriali e ai lemmi dei titoli. Il vocabolario, dopo la tappa delle equivalenze e la scelta di una soglia di frequenza ≥ 3, è di 7795 parole, di cui 1238 dive...
Terrorism has been increasingly viewed as a complex phenomenon imbued with political objectives a... more Terrorism has been increasingly viewed as a complex phenomenon imbued with political objectives and media interests. From this perspective, it is crucial to understand how terrorism is socially represented and the role the media plays in creating and molding its image. Using four scales, this study explores the following issues as they relate to normal populations who have no link to terrorism: (1) Terrorist Definitions; (2) Attitudes, Beliefs and Experiences of Terrorism; (3) Immediate Impact of Terrorism; and (4) perceived positive or negative role of the media. Moreover, the study analyzes the role of political orientation and the need for cognitive closure (NFC) in shaping one’s representations of terrorism. The sample consists of 409 Italian respondents. Four analyses of main components were conducted. Subsequently, a secondorder factor analysis of all four scales generated a three-factor solution that accounts for 51% of the variance. Finally, a correlational analysis of political orientation, NFC, and representations of terrorists and terrorism was performed. Results suggest that more conservative participants, who exhibited a higher NFC, view terrorists as psychologically deviant and criminal. By contrast, leftwing participants, with a lower NFC, view terrorism as a complex phenomenon linked to politics of fear and discrimination. These participants view the media as having a negative role relating to the perpetuation of terrorism. Keywords: representations of terrorists; terrorism; media role; social psychological perspective; political orientation; NFC
This article, which is set in the historical-critical tradition, is divided into three parts. The... more This article, which is set in the historical-critical tradition, is divided into three parts. The first part deals with the different possible ways of making history, both in general terms – with a marked attention to Nietzsche and Foucault’s points of view analysed in relation to the traditional ones – and in the psychological field. The second part refers to some fundamental elements of the historiographical debate concerning social psychology, with a particular emphasis on the disputes arisen from Gordon Allport’s historical chapter on the background of modern social psychology which was published in 1954 in Lindzey’s Handbook of Social Psychology. The third part draws on the results of a survey aimed at exploring the role played by some key issues, provided by Allport’s chapter, in the international scientific communication conveyed by the ‘Psychological literature’ from 1887 to 1954. Some ‘founding myths’ of the discipline are brought into question by the analysis of the survey’s main results: in particular, the myth supporting the idea of an Anglophone and entirely individuocentric social psychology, or that of an entirely sociocentric European tradition, and that of social psychology’s limited applicative disposition
Establishing social psychology as a distinct field of study has been the object of heated debate ... more Establishing social psychology as a distinct field of study has been the object of heated debate over the first decades of the 20th century. Entrenched in different theoretical
traditions, such as philosophy, sociology, psychology, and criminology, the development of the conceptual boundaries of social psychology as an autonomous science was the result of a historic effort. Resulting from a negotiation process between competing stances, some voices relevant to the identity construction of social psychology have been lost over time. Within the framework of a “polycentric” historical perspective
valorizing local histories, the present study aims to scrutinize those early voices, which were later marginalized. To this scope, we conducted a narrative analysis on the first volumes explicitly naming social psychology in their titles and identified the main themes, conceptual frameworks, and scientific advancements. The analysis illustrates the work of Gualtiero Sarfatti and articulates his forgotten contribution to drawing
social psychology as a distinct discipline, built on the scientific method and positioned within the psychological sociocentric tradition. Our analysis reveals the leading role of Sarfatti in the disciplinary foundation of social psychology as a psychological science based on the concept of social psyche. Yet despite the fact his contribution was influential in the scholarly community of his time, our work highlights how his voice vanished from the subsequent disciplinary developments to date, and suggests some explanations behind this neglect.
Keywords: critical history, forerunners of Italian social psychology, narrative analysis
SEXIST LANGUAGE AND WOMEN’S REPRESENTATIONS IN
JOURNALISTIC COMMUNICATION ABOUT FEMALE MINISTERS
... more SEXIST LANGUAGE AND WOMEN’S REPRESENTATIONS IN JOURNALISTIC COMMUNICATION ABOUT FEMALE MINISTERS OF THE PRODI (2006) AND BERLUSCONI (2008) GOVERNMENTS. A SOCIAL-PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS ON HEADLINES OF THE ITALIAN PRESS WITH DIFFERENT CULTURAL AND IDEOLOGICAL ORIENTATION The study focuses on media representations of ten women ministers in two different Italian governments - six ministers of the center-left government led by Prodi in 2006 (Bindi, Bonino, Lanzillotta, Melandri, Pollastrini, Turco) and four ministers of the center-right led by Berlusconi in 2008 (Carfagna, Gelmini, Meloni, Prestigiacomo). These representations, monitored in 514 news headlines from five Italian newspapers (L’Unità, La Repubblica, Il Corriere della Sera, Il Tempo, Il Giornale), were analyzed according to a twofold comparative perspective centered on the role of ministers’ political affiliations and on the role of the source ideological and cultural orientation. The study also examines the use of sexist language by detecting the generic masculine and the specific feminine applied to the ministers. Textual data were processed with different steps of the statistical package SPAD- T for the analysis of the vocabulary and the lexicographic characterization of headlines relating to the ten ministers and the five daily papers in two years. In the analysis of the sexist language we found an over-utilization of the masculine generic by all dailies and a few cases of feminine specific, mainly by the left and center-left dailies. The language under observation was interpreted as a site of production, reproduction and dissemination of representations strongly permeated by gender stereotypes. Through this study, we have shown that these stereotypes, operating in a political context in which the role of women is still very marginal, contribute to crystallize women’s marginality, rather than providing incentives to overcome it and pave the way for greater women’s participation in politics. Keywords: sexist language, social representations and gender stereotypes, media, women in politics.
Women ministers of center-left (2006) and center-right (2008) in Italian daily press:
political c... more Women ministers of center-left (2006) and center-right (2008) in Italian daily press: political communication and gender representations The research is framed in the tradition of social representations with particular reference to the media role and language. The object of investigation is to explore the political communication dedicated to the nine women ministers of the center-left government in 2006 (six) and center-right government in 2008 (four) and its possible correspondence with the representations self-reported by Italian women involved in politics. The aims are to highlight: 1) the existence of gender stereotypical traits considered masculine or feminine (eg. competitiveness vs. collaborativeness, independence vs. dependence, assertiveness vs. liabilities, etc.); 2) the reference to internal obstacles (no leadership, low self-esteem and self-efficacy, etc.) and 3) external (glass ceiling theory, labyrinth theory, no quotas for women, etc.) in the careers of women ministers; 4) the use of a more abstract or more concrete language to describe the characteristics/activities of women ministers according to the LCM (Semin e Fiedler, 1988); 5) the use of language which gives/takes away visibility to the female genre of ministers (eg., male generic or female specific). The material under consideration is composed of 175 articles published in five Italian newspapers (L’Unità, La Repubblica, Il Corriere della Sera, Il Tempo, Il Giornale). They were selected because they contained the names of women ministers in the titles. Each of the five points above has been transformed into content categories detected in the body of the article and reported in the form of lemmas (composed of the specific modality of the variable and of the Minister name) in a lexicographic files which contains also the words of the headlines. By the MOTS step of the statistical program SPAD-T were obtained frequencies of general vocabulary consisting of words relating to headlines and to content variables. The results allow to discuss the differences in language and content in general, with respect to the ten women ministers, and in comparison with the representations self-reported by Italian women politician. Keywords: gender stereotypes, sexist language, analysis on newspapers, content analysis, lexicographical analysis, representations of women in politics [203-230].
The present study embraces the critical traditions of &am... more The present study embraces the critical traditions of "New History" and of social representations theory articulated with the mainstream historiographical tradition of a bibliometric approach. The historical analysis deals with the early representations of Italian social psychology articulated and disseminated by some of the main Italian scientific-cultural and philosophical journals. We examined seven journals published between 1875 and 1954, and gathered 2,030 texts dealing with the various forms of social and collective psychology. We have applied a grid of content analysis whose data have been transcribed to a numerical file. At the same time, we have created a textual file containing the titles of the contributions as well as the names of the authors and scholars reviewed. The two files have been processed by SPAD-T for a correspondence analysis in which both lexical data and category variables have been considered as active variables. Through the scree-test, two factors that explain 18.90% of the variance have been singled out. Their combination has produced a factorial plan able to highlight three distinct areas differently characterized from journals and years. The results are also discussed with regard to the contextual historical frame.
The research explores some differential elements of representations of Jubilee and of the city of... more The research explores some differential elements of representations of Jubilee and of the city of Rome in relation to semantic-lexical production that are hypothesised to characterise those psychologically deeper aspects of representations. The subjects are 292 high school students, contacted in: may-june 1998. The questionnaire utilised is differently articulated in order to collect informations about: level of familiarity in front of contents and symbols of Events, attitudes, etc..., and semantic production around the 22 stimulus-words: like ENVIRONMENT, CHURCH OF SAN PIETRO, etc. Data were analysed using the statistical package SPAD-T with particular reference for MOCAR step. Referring to the analysis of textual data, lexical characterisations of groups built from the social-cultural profile of level of religiosity were individualised. The results are discussed in terms of typical discourse built around semantic-lexical production of each group.
Il presente lavoro prende l'avvio dai risultati di una serie di indagini volte ad esplorare le ra... more Il presente lavoro prende l'avvio dai risultati di una serie di indagini volte ad esplorare le rappresentazioni dei disordini/rivolte nelle periferie francesi del novembre 2005 nella stampa quotidiana italiana. L'obiettivo di partenza era verificare se tali episodi fossero stati descritti in termini di azioni violente devianti o come movimenti politici di protesta, verificando al tempo stesso il ruolo ricoperto dall'orientamento politicoculturale della fonte. Così attraverso l'analisi degli articoli di diversi quotidiani si erano potute ricostruire le rappresentazioni delle violenze agite dai giovani francesi, descritti in alcuni casi come immigrati, in altri come teppisti, in altri ancora come giovani francesi emarginati. In proposito il dato interessante riguardava il rinvio trasversale, rispetto all'orientamento politico-ideologico della fonte, all'etichetta di "immigrato" per definire i rivoltosi. Esso si rivelava frutto di un vero e proprio bias comunicativo rifiutato dagli stessi protagonisti dei disordini che, intervistati in indagini sul campo, tenevano alla propria identità di giovani cittadini francesi (cfr. Cicchelli et al, 2008), dato, questo, più in generale sottolineato anche dalla letteratura sociologica su quegli eventi (cfr.
... A comparative study of the structure of attitudes toward computers, science, and technology w... more ... A comparative study of the structure of attitudes toward computers, science, and technology was ... To spend public money filling schools and public administration with useless computers ... Within field of study, humanities and psychology students have more negative and less ...
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Papers by Gilda Sensales
creating and molding its image. Using four scales, this study explores the following issues as they relate to normal populations who have no link to terrorism: (1) Terrorist Definitions; (2) Attitudes, Beliefs and Experiences of
Terrorism; (3) Immediate Impact of Terrorism; and (4) perceived positive or
negative role of the media. Moreover, the study analyzes the role of political orientation and the need for cognitive closure (NFC) in shaping one’s representations of terrorism. The sample consists of 409 Italian respondents.
Four analyses of main components were conducted. Subsequently, a secondorder factor analysis of all four scales generated a three-factor solution that accounts for 51% of the variance. Finally, a correlational analysis of political
orientation, NFC, and representations of terrorists and terrorism was performed. Results suggest that more conservative participants, who exhibited a higher NFC, view terrorists as psychologically deviant and criminal. By contrast, leftwing participants, with a lower NFC, view terrorism as a complex phenomenon linked to politics of fear and discrimination. These participants view the media
as having a negative role relating to the perpetuation of terrorism.
Keywords: representations of terrorists; terrorism; media role; social psychological perspective; political orientation; NFC
published in 1954 in Lindzey’s Handbook of Social Psychology. The third part draws on the results of a survey aimed at exploring the role played by some key issues, provided by Allport’s chapter, in the international scientific communication conveyed by the ‘Psychological literature’ from 1887 to 1954.
Some ‘founding myths’ of the discipline are brought into question by the analysis of the survey’s main results: in particular, the myth supporting the idea of an Anglophone and entirely individuocentric social psychology, or that
of an entirely sociocentric European tradition, and that of social psychology’s limited applicative disposition
traditions, such as philosophy, sociology, psychology, and criminology, the development of the conceptual boundaries of social psychology as an autonomous science was the result of a historic effort. Resulting from a negotiation process between competing stances, some voices relevant to the identity construction of social psychology have been lost over time. Within the framework of a “polycentric” historical perspective
valorizing local histories, the present study aims to scrutinize those early voices, which were later marginalized. To this scope, we conducted a narrative analysis on the first volumes explicitly naming social psychology in their titles and identified the main themes, conceptual frameworks, and scientific advancements. The analysis illustrates the work of Gualtiero Sarfatti and articulates his forgotten contribution to drawing
social psychology as a distinct discipline, built on the scientific method and positioned within the psychological sociocentric tradition. Our analysis reveals the leading role of Sarfatti in the disciplinary foundation of social psychology as a psychological science based on the concept of social psyche. Yet despite the fact his contribution was influential in the scholarly community of his time, our work highlights how his voice vanished from the subsequent disciplinary developments to date, and suggests some explanations behind this neglect.
Keywords: critical history, forerunners of Italian social psychology, narrative analysis
JOURNALISTIC COMMUNICATION ABOUT FEMALE MINISTERS
OF THE PRODI (2006) AND BERLUSCONI (2008) GOVERNMENTS.
A SOCIAL-PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS
ON HEADLINES OF THE ITALIAN PRESS WITH DIFFERENT
CULTURAL AND IDEOLOGICAL ORIENTATION
The study focuses on media representations of ten women ministers in two different Italian governments - six ministers of the center-left government led by Prodi in 2006 (Bindi, Bonino, Lanzillotta, Melandri, Pollastrini, Turco) and four ministers of the center-right led by Berlusconi in 2008 (Carfagna, Gelmini, Meloni, Prestigiacomo). These representations, monitored in 514 news headlines from five Italian newspapers (L’Unità, La Repubblica, Il Corriere della Sera, Il Tempo, Il Giornale), were analyzed according to a twofold comparative perspective
centered on the role of ministers’ political affiliations and on the role of the source ideological and cultural orientation. The study also examines the use of sexist language by detecting the generic masculine and the specific feminine applied to the ministers. Textual data were processed with different steps of the statistical package SPAD- T for the analysis of the vocabulary and the lexicographic characterization of headlines relating to the ten ministers and the five daily papers
in two years. In the analysis of the sexist language we found an over-utilization of the masculine generic by all dailies and a few cases of feminine specific, mainly by the left and center-left dailies. The language under observation was interpreted
as a site of production, reproduction and dissemination of representations strongly permeated by gender stereotypes. Through this study, we have shown that these stereotypes, operating in a political context in which the role of women is still
very marginal, contribute to crystallize women’s marginality, rather than providing incentives to overcome it and pave the way for greater women’s participation in politics.
Keywords: sexist language, social representations and gender stereotypes, media, women in politics.
political communication and gender representations
The research is framed in the tradition of social representations with particular reference
to the media role and language. The object of investigation is to explore the political communication
dedicated to the nine women ministers of the center-left government in 2006
(six) and center-right government in 2008 (four) and its possible correspondence with
the representations self-reported by Italian women involved in politics. The aims are to
highlight: 1) the existence of gender stereotypical traits considered masculine or feminine
(eg. competitiveness vs. collaborativeness, independence vs. dependence, assertiveness
vs. liabilities, etc.); 2) the reference to internal obstacles (no leadership, low self-esteem
and self-efficacy, etc.) and 3) external (glass ceiling theory, labyrinth theory, no quotas for
women, etc.) in the careers of women ministers; 4) the use of a more abstract or more
concrete language to describe the characteristics/activities of women ministers according
to the LCM (Semin e Fiedler, 1988); 5) the use of language which gives/takes away visibility
to the female genre of ministers (eg., male generic or female specific). The material
under consideration is composed of 175 articles published in five Italian newspapers
(L’Unità, La Repubblica, Il Corriere della Sera, Il Tempo, Il Giornale). They were selected
because they contained the names of women ministers in the titles. Each of the five points
above has been transformed into content categories detected in the body of the article and
reported in the form of lemmas (composed of the specific modality of the variable and
of the Minister name) in a lexicographic files which contains also the words of the headlines.
By the MOTS step of the statistical program SPAD-T were obtained frequencies of
general vocabulary consisting of words relating to headlines and to content variables. The
results allow to discuss the differences in language and content in general, with respect
to the ten women ministers, and in comparison with the representations self-reported by
Italian women politician.
Keywords: gender stereotypes, sexist language, analysis on newspapers, content analysis,
lexicographical analysis, representations of women in politics [203-230].
creating and molding its image. Using four scales, this study explores the following issues as they relate to normal populations who have no link to terrorism: (1) Terrorist Definitions; (2) Attitudes, Beliefs and Experiences of
Terrorism; (3) Immediate Impact of Terrorism; and (4) perceived positive or
negative role of the media. Moreover, the study analyzes the role of political orientation and the need for cognitive closure (NFC) in shaping one’s representations of terrorism. The sample consists of 409 Italian respondents.
Four analyses of main components were conducted. Subsequently, a secondorder factor analysis of all four scales generated a three-factor solution that accounts for 51% of the variance. Finally, a correlational analysis of political
orientation, NFC, and representations of terrorists and terrorism was performed. Results suggest that more conservative participants, who exhibited a higher NFC, view terrorists as psychologically deviant and criminal. By contrast, leftwing participants, with a lower NFC, view terrorism as a complex phenomenon linked to politics of fear and discrimination. These participants view the media
as having a negative role relating to the perpetuation of terrorism.
Keywords: representations of terrorists; terrorism; media role; social psychological perspective; political orientation; NFC
published in 1954 in Lindzey’s Handbook of Social Psychology. The third part draws on the results of a survey aimed at exploring the role played by some key issues, provided by Allport’s chapter, in the international scientific communication conveyed by the ‘Psychological literature’ from 1887 to 1954.
Some ‘founding myths’ of the discipline are brought into question by the analysis of the survey’s main results: in particular, the myth supporting the idea of an Anglophone and entirely individuocentric social psychology, or that
of an entirely sociocentric European tradition, and that of social psychology’s limited applicative disposition
traditions, such as philosophy, sociology, psychology, and criminology, the development of the conceptual boundaries of social psychology as an autonomous science was the result of a historic effort. Resulting from a negotiation process between competing stances, some voices relevant to the identity construction of social psychology have been lost over time. Within the framework of a “polycentric” historical perspective
valorizing local histories, the present study aims to scrutinize those early voices, which were later marginalized. To this scope, we conducted a narrative analysis on the first volumes explicitly naming social psychology in their titles and identified the main themes, conceptual frameworks, and scientific advancements. The analysis illustrates the work of Gualtiero Sarfatti and articulates his forgotten contribution to drawing
social psychology as a distinct discipline, built on the scientific method and positioned within the psychological sociocentric tradition. Our analysis reveals the leading role of Sarfatti in the disciplinary foundation of social psychology as a psychological science based on the concept of social psyche. Yet despite the fact his contribution was influential in the scholarly community of his time, our work highlights how his voice vanished from the subsequent disciplinary developments to date, and suggests some explanations behind this neglect.
Keywords: critical history, forerunners of Italian social psychology, narrative analysis
JOURNALISTIC COMMUNICATION ABOUT FEMALE MINISTERS
OF THE PRODI (2006) AND BERLUSCONI (2008) GOVERNMENTS.
A SOCIAL-PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS
ON HEADLINES OF THE ITALIAN PRESS WITH DIFFERENT
CULTURAL AND IDEOLOGICAL ORIENTATION
The study focuses on media representations of ten women ministers in two different Italian governments - six ministers of the center-left government led by Prodi in 2006 (Bindi, Bonino, Lanzillotta, Melandri, Pollastrini, Turco) and four ministers of the center-right led by Berlusconi in 2008 (Carfagna, Gelmini, Meloni, Prestigiacomo). These representations, monitored in 514 news headlines from five Italian newspapers (L’Unità, La Repubblica, Il Corriere della Sera, Il Tempo, Il Giornale), were analyzed according to a twofold comparative perspective
centered on the role of ministers’ political affiliations and on the role of the source ideological and cultural orientation. The study also examines the use of sexist language by detecting the generic masculine and the specific feminine applied to the ministers. Textual data were processed with different steps of the statistical package SPAD- T for the analysis of the vocabulary and the lexicographic characterization of headlines relating to the ten ministers and the five daily papers
in two years. In the analysis of the sexist language we found an over-utilization of the masculine generic by all dailies and a few cases of feminine specific, mainly by the left and center-left dailies. The language under observation was interpreted
as a site of production, reproduction and dissemination of representations strongly permeated by gender stereotypes. Through this study, we have shown that these stereotypes, operating in a political context in which the role of women is still
very marginal, contribute to crystallize women’s marginality, rather than providing incentives to overcome it and pave the way for greater women’s participation in politics.
Keywords: sexist language, social representations and gender stereotypes, media, women in politics.
political communication and gender representations
The research is framed in the tradition of social representations with particular reference
to the media role and language. The object of investigation is to explore the political communication
dedicated to the nine women ministers of the center-left government in 2006
(six) and center-right government in 2008 (four) and its possible correspondence with
the representations self-reported by Italian women involved in politics. The aims are to
highlight: 1) the existence of gender stereotypical traits considered masculine or feminine
(eg. competitiveness vs. collaborativeness, independence vs. dependence, assertiveness
vs. liabilities, etc.); 2) the reference to internal obstacles (no leadership, low self-esteem
and self-efficacy, etc.) and 3) external (glass ceiling theory, labyrinth theory, no quotas for
women, etc.) in the careers of women ministers; 4) the use of a more abstract or more
concrete language to describe the characteristics/activities of women ministers according
to the LCM (Semin e Fiedler, 1988); 5) the use of language which gives/takes away visibility
to the female genre of ministers (eg., male generic or female specific). The material
under consideration is composed of 175 articles published in five Italian newspapers
(L’Unità, La Repubblica, Il Corriere della Sera, Il Tempo, Il Giornale). They were selected
because they contained the names of women ministers in the titles. Each of the five points
above has been transformed into content categories detected in the body of the article and
reported in the form of lemmas (composed of the specific modality of the variable and
of the Minister name) in a lexicographic files which contains also the words of the headlines.
By the MOTS step of the statistical program SPAD-T were obtained frequencies of
general vocabulary consisting of words relating to headlines and to content variables. The
results allow to discuss the differences in language and content in general, with respect
to the ten women ministers, and in comparison with the representations self-reported by
Italian women politician.
Keywords: gender stereotypes, sexist language, analysis on newspapers, content analysis,
lexicographical analysis, representations of women in politics [203-230].