The Contribution of Social Representations Theory for a Social Psychology of Communication Laboratory

This chapter describes the mission and research of the Social Psychology of Communication and Cognition Laboratory (Laboratório de Psicologia Social da Comunicação e Cognição) at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (LACCOS–UFSC). After explaining how the lab was set up, the authors illustrate the communication systems model from the social representations perspective. This goes beyond previous communication paradigms that use metaphors like the machine, the organism, or Frankenstein and toward a contextualized conception of social communication. Studies conducted by the Lab exemplify how change and continuity might be experimentally explored. Some of them concern scientific knowledge on HIV/AIDS and show how to tackle the dialogical knowledge generated by the ternary Ego-Alter-Object view proposed by means of experimental designs in the social representation domain. The chapter closes with some considerations on the COVID-19 pandemic and the dynamics of social representations.