运用社会表征理论理解气候变化:澳大利亚科学界与非科学界在思考什么

Using social representations theory to make sense of climate change:What scientists and nonscientists in Australia think

大众传媒确保了气候变化这种复杂又具挑战性的现象如今家喻户晓。然而,人们所理解的气候变化是什么?又是谁的理解?人们在就气候变化进行有意义的沟通时,又使用了什么样的参照系?社会中的特殊子群体会不会有不同的理解,或者说,对于气候变化的争论和信息传播,会不会围绕"气候变化是什么"的某种核心感知或意象发生重合?为了回答这些问题,作者在社会表征理论之中形成气候变化的概念。社会表征理论是新兴的社会建构知识。在澳大利亚,作者对3300位具有科学、政府或公众背景的人进行了词汇联想数据收集和分析,要求他们写下想到气候变化时脑海中首先浮现的词汇。对比分析这些数据揭示了不同背景的调查对象对气候变化有不同的定义。结果显示,虽然不同的群体有一套相同的核心概念,但他们对气候变化的框架和想象却存在很大的差异。

The mass media has ensured that the challenging and complex phenomenon of climate change now has the household familiarity of a brand name.But what is it that is understood by climate change,and by whom? What frame of reference is drawn upon to communicate meaningfully about climate change? Do particular subgroups within our society hold different understandings,or have the debate and the prolific dissemination of information about this issue coalesced around a core perception or image of what climate change is? To answer these questions,the authors conceptualized climate change within the theory of social representations as emergent socially constructed knowledge.They analyzed word association data collected in Australia from persons identifying as having a scientific,government,or general public background(N = 3300).All respondents were asked to write the first words that came to mind when they thought about climate change.Comparative analyses of the word associations reveal that respondents from different backgrounds define climate change in different ways.The results suggest that there is a common core set of concepts shared by the different groups,but there are also a great many differences in how climate change is framed and conceived by respondents.