The Narrative and Dialogical Approaches to Social Representations Theory

Introduction: Current article presents a study conducted within a project of meta-theoretical analysis on the part of body of Social Representations literature launched by Annamaria Silvana de Rosa in 1994 (de Rosa 1994, 2001a, 2001b, 2002, 2013, 2016) with the goal of assessing the influence of the scientific production driven by narrative approach in Social Representations Theory. It is a part of EC-funded project (ITN-People MSCA-IDP 2013, no. 607279 http://www.europhd.eu/SoReComJointIDP) led by de Rosa at the European/International Joint PhD on Social Representations and Communication Research Centre and Multimedia Lab. Aim: The aim is to take stock of the scientific field developed in more than 50 years by conducting an empirical meta-theoretical analysis of the literature on Social Representations, mapping the development of dialogical and narrative paradigmatic approaches and linked to them rhetorical and discursive/conversational research traditions, their research methods, the thematic areas and their impact on the various applied fields within the multi-generational community of scientists and across different geo-cultural contexts. Data sources and Methodology: Bibliographic sources using dialogical and narrative paradigmatic approaches as well as sources referring to the rhetorical and discursive/conversational research traditions in Social Representations Theory were extracted from the SoReCom “A.S. de Rosa”@-Library bibliographic repository (de Rosa, 2014, 2015) and analysed using the Grid for meta-theoretical analysis developed by de Rosa in 1994 (updated version 2014d). Statistical analyses have supported the identification of the key results under the lens of Multiple Correspondence Analysis, the Descending Hierarchical Cluster Analysis and The Correspondence Factorial Analysis. Results: Coherently with the aims, the key results highlight the approaches’ diffusion in the multi-theoretical, multi-countries and multi-language geo-cultural contexts of different continents, by investigating relevant relationship between a set of meta-data - including the type of publications; bibliometric indexes (Impact Factor and SJR) of the journals; authors’ institutional affiliation countries and continents, inter- institutional collaborations (inter-continental and intracontinental), language, and evolution by decades – and the data detected through the meta-theoretical analysis – including constructs, theories, functions and main processes related to Social Representations Theory, the link with other construct, theories and disciplinary fields, the methodological profile, the preferred thematic areas and domain of applications.