Mapping the central structure core in social representation of pain

Network analysis approach for exploring dementia representations in the Slovak media

Objectives

The aim of the present study is to test the network analysis method on a corpus of media texts with the aim of systematically analysing media representations of dementia in the Slovak media.

Methods

A word-network was modelled from the corpus of media documents using social network analysis. 244 text-documents (web, print, TV and radio) from 2015 to 2018 (inclusive) were retrieved from the Newton media database using the search words ‘dementia’ and ‘Alzheimer’s disease’.

Results

Twelve clusters of co-occurring concepts corresponding to individual themes were identified. The results of the analysis provide evidence that biomedical themes such as ‘medical diagnosis’, ‘prevalence of dementia’ and ‘memory disorders’ possess the greatest representational strength and centrality and account for roughly two-thirds of the whole corpus.

Conclusion

Results of the present study provide valuable insights into the representation of dementia in the Slovak media but also demonstrate how media representations can be studied using the innovative approach of network analysis.

The social representations of suicide in France: An inter-regional study in Alsace and Brittany

BACKGROUND

Suicide is a major worldwide public health issue. Various studies showed that individual attitudes toward suicide change in a region with high suicide rate. Attitudes are one of the components of a global and complex system: social representations (SRs).

AIMS

In France, the Brittany region has an abnormally high death rate due to suicides. Our research focuses on the SRs of suicide in this region. The hypothesis underlying this project is that suicide SRs are different between an area with a high suicide rate and a region less affected by suicide.

METHOD

A comparative study between the Brittany and Alsace regions, with the latter showing a statistically much lower suicide rate. The persons polled responded to a three-word free-association task around the question 'For you, suicide is …?' An analysis of word frequency and evocation rank was then carried out.

RESULTS

In confirmation of our hypothesis, SRs were different between Brittany and the control region.

CONCLUSION

The study's results open new avenues of research, specific to Brittany, in terms of the collective or individual effects of suicides, in terms of psycho-pathological conditions - essentially on depression, and in terms of training, on the stereotypes associated with suicide.