Introduction to the Special Issue of Social Representations of Covid-19: Rethinking the Pandemic’s Reality and Social Representations

  • Dario Páez University of the Basque Country, Bilbao, Spain
  • Juan A. Pérez University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain
Keywords: social representations, covid-19, anchorage, propaganda, conspiracy, cognitive polyphasia

Abstract

This special issue of PSR focuses on the social representations of SARS or Covid- 19. The first study by Pizarro and colleagues analyzes the prevalence of social representations about the Covid-19 pandemic in 17 countries in the Americas, Europe and Asia, their association with perceived risk and their anchoring in sociopolitical beliefs, such as RWA and SDO. The second and third articles comment on the social communication processes around Covid-19 in Brazil and France (Apostolidis, Santos, & Kalampalikis, this issue; Justo, Bousfield, Giacomozzi, & Camargo, this issue), the fourth in Italy and a last one in South Africa (de Rosa & Mannarini, this issue; Sitto & Lubinga, this issue). Three studies (fifth, sixth and seventh) examines the structure of social representations related to Covid-19 using questionnaires, the free-association technique and inductive terms like Coronavirus (Colì, Norcia & Bruzzone, this issue; Fasanelli, Piscitelli & Galli, this issue) and the new normality (Emiliani et al., this issue), analyzed by different techniques like automatic lexical analysis (IRaMuTeQ). Finally, Denise Jodelet makes a final comment and closes this issue with a reflection on Covid-19 “a separate epidemic”. In this introduction, rather than summarizing the articles, we will develop the themes and the questions they raise.

 

Author Biographies

Dario Páez, University of the Basque Country, Bilbao, Spain

DARIO PÁEZ graduated in Psychology from the Universite de Louvain, 1979. PhD in Social Psychology at the Faculty of Psychology, Universite de Louvain, 1983. He has been working at the University of the Basque Country since 1983. First as a full professor and since 1995, as Professor of Social Psychology. He has published research on various topics such as psychosocial factors of health and wellbeing, cross-cultural social psychology, transitional justice and truth commissions, collective gatherings and collective emotions, collective memory and social representations. Among his publications is Darío Páez & Juan A. Pérez (2020) Social Representations of Covid-19. International Journal of Social Psychology, 35(3), 600-610. E-mail: dario.paez@ehu.es

Juan A. Pérez, University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain

JUAN A. PÉREZ graduated in Psychology from the University of Salamanca. Specialized in Social Psychology at the Laboratory of Experimental Social Psychology of the University of Geneva, where he spent eight years. He has been working at the University of Valencia since 1988. First as a full professor and since 2005, as Professor of Social Psychology. He has published research on various topics such as uxoricide, mass disobedience of the traffic code, smoking, anti-Roma prejudice, influence of minorities on social innovation and social representations. Among his publications is Pérez, J. A. (2019). Le préjugé dans la perspective d’étude des representations sociales. In F. Emiliani & A. Palmonari (Eds.), Repenser la théorie des représentations sociales. Editions des archives contemporaines, Coll. «Psychologie du social», France,, pp 103-122., doi : 10.17184/ eac.9782813003317. E-mail: juan.a.perez@uv.es

Published
2020-12-31