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The relationship between sense of community (SOC) and citizen participation has been extensively studied in community psychology. Connecting Social Representations and SOC theory, this study explored the lay meanings of citizen participation and its association with SOC. A word association task and a measure of territorial SOC were administered to 390 participants, and data analyzed to explore the contents of the social representations of citizen participation conveyed by the interviewees and their salience. Results revealed that different levels of SOC were associated with variations in the social representation of citizen participation. Specifically, among high-SOC participants the notion of formal political participation prevailed, while among low-SOC participants a more articulated vision emerged, encompassing social and community participation, and also conventional and non conventional types of participatory behaviors. ; peerReviewed ; publishedVersion

The relationship between sense of community (SOC) and citizen participation has been extensively studied in community psychology. Connecting Social Representations and SOC theory, this study explored the lay meanings of citizen participation and its association with SOC. A word association task and a measure of territorial SOC were administered to 390 participants, and data analyzed to explore the contents of the social representations of citizen participation conveyed by the interviewees and their salience. Results revealed that different levels of SOC were associated with variations in the social representation of citizen participation. Specifically, among high-SOC participants the notion of formal political participation prevailed, while among low-SOC participants a more articulated vision emerged, encompassing social and community participation, and also conventional and non conventional types of participatory behaviors.

Concerns about immigration are salient in the European Union and in Malta in particular. Previous research has demonstrated deep antipathy towards the Arab community in Malta, and social representations of Arabs are mired in a conflation of ethnic and religious categories with negative connotations. This paper presents evidence of the potency, within the public sphere, of negative arguments from cultural essentialism, concerning the integration of Arabs in Europe. The data was obtained abductively from a data corpus containing positive, mixed and negative arguments about Arabs and their integration. Results show evidence of the almost total exclusivity of cultural essentialism. All such arguments posited Arabic culture as an underlying essence that makes integration with Arabs difficult or impossible, yet different arguments were distinguishable by emphasis. Results pointed towards forms of culturally essentialist views that vary in their emphasis of different aspects of cultural essentialism. Reductionist, determinist, bounded and temporal aspects of cultural essentialism were all emphasised by respondents. The essentialist exceptions to negative arguments from cultural essentialism were extremely few in number and were posed tentatively by participants. Their paucity and manner of delivery give strength to the claim that it is strictly an Arabic cultural essence that is deemed to make integration impossible in the eyes of participants. Findings are discussed in light of the communicative functions that these dominant argumentative strategies fulfill.

The notion of "resilience" has spilled over from the field of science and entered the field of policy, turning into a public and political object. The current study explores the social representations of resilience produced by press discourses between 2001 and 2017 in three different national contexts (Spain, France, and Italy), and examines the degree to which such representations incorporate technical and scientific meanings or rather include new components. A total amount of 1,298 articles published in three national newspapers (La Repubblica, Italy; Le Monde, France; and El Pais, Spain) were collected and analyzed for themes using the T-LAB software. The findings revealed more similarities than differences among the countries. The interest towards the topic increased over time, with the representations of resilience becoming more and more diversified and multifaceted. The technical and scientific components remained in the background, while a "practical theory" of resilience emerged, echoing the use of the concept in policy making, specifically in the European Union institutions approach.

Various forms of political participation are found in democratic societies, and these are diversifying at a steady pace. Scholarly literature presents us with an array of typologies of participation, some of which were conceived theoretically, and others derived from empirical research. This paper studies how political participation surfaces in media discourse in Italy and Greece. Specifically, it seeks to understand the social representations of political participation in both countries between 2000 and 2015, and to see which typologies of political participation are reflected in such representations. A media analysis was carried out on a sizeable corpus of newspaper articles in both countries. Data were analysed using a combination of correspondence and cluster analysis. The results indicate higher internal differentiation and gradualness characterising the social representations of political participation in the Italian corpus. In Greece, there was the presence of more radical ideological alternatives to electoral participation. Moreover, results indicate temporal stability in the themes pertaining to political participation over the years. The main contribution of this paper lies in showing that content pertaining to various typologies of political participation (e.g., relating to influence, in/formality and protest) features in the social representations of political participation in newspaper media. Findings are discussed in view of the temporal distribution of representational content, and by comparing country-specific typologies (for Italy and Greece) with those present in the literature. ; peer-reviewed

A correction update is attached. ; This paper reports the framework, method and main findings of an analysis of cultural milieus in 4 European countries (Estonia, Greece, Italy, and UK). The analysis is based on a questionnaire applied to a sample built through a two-step procedure of post-hoc random selection from a broader dataset based on an online survey. Responses to the questionnaire were subjected to multidimensional analysis±a combination of Multiple Correspondence Analysis and Cluster Analysis. We identified 5 symbolic universes, that correspond to basic, embodied, affect-laden, generalized worldviews. People in this study see the world as either a) an ordered universe; b) a matter of interpersonal bond; c) a caring society; d) consisting of a niche of belongingness; e) a hostile place (others' world). These symbolic universes were also interpreted as semiotic capital: they reflect the capacity of a place to foster social and civic development. Moreover, the distribution of the symbolic universes, and therefore social and civic engagement, is demonstrated to be variable across the 4 countries in the analysis. Finally, we develop a retrospective reconstruction of the distribution of symbolic universes as well as the interplay between their current state and past, present and future socio-institutional scenarios. ; The study is part of the Re.Cri.Re Project (www.recrire.eu), that has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 649436 ; peer-reviewed