More than a Common Place: A Social Representations Approach to the Internet

This study aimed to investigate the commonsense knowledge about the Internet and its relationship with social groupings from the perspective of social representations theory. We surveyed 1013 participants (students, teachers, and guardians) from three schools, using the ranked association technique, the General Internet Attitudes Scale, and the Web-Use Skill Measure Index. We conducted a correspondence analysis on the data. Results showed that the representation of the Internet is associated with different social groupings, being organized along a media-message axis and a personal-social axis. While students, participants with lower education levels and participants with positive attitudes toward the Internet have a personal media usage representation, teachers and participants with higher education levels showed a greater focus on the social message. This study is significant because it shows that the Internet – as a social object – is not consensual. This suggests a connection between the social representations of the Internet and social identity that future research should explore to better understand and bridge the digital divide.