Ricerc@Sapienza

This article focuses on destination branding using social representations as the main theoretical framework, with a specific focus on ICT-mediated social representations. It tackles the questions related to destination e-branding expressed through web marketing of city brand identity and city brand image of ten European capitals (Rome, Paris, Berlin, Brussels, Helsinki, Lisbon, London, Madrid, Warsaw, and Vienna). The data derives from asynchronous and interactive e-tourism communication channels.

The mass media are more than ever taking on the role of a socialization agency and contributing to the construction of new social representations. They are producing and perpetuating stereotypes that get crystallized in the individual and collective imagination, determined and defined by the goods produced by the culture industry.

This paper summarizes and discusses a series of studies conducted in Italy over the last 10 years on the theme of sustainable urban mobility. The studies applied different theoretical models (attitude theory, social representation theory and the communication research approach) and methodological approaches (quantitative and qualitative) to investigate citizens’ orientations (in terms of values, attitudes, beliefs and representations) toward the adoption of more sustainable transportation styles in an urban context.

Photovoice is a participatory action-research strategy that has
been mainly adopted to give voice to “unheard” groups. In this
article, we adapted this strategy in a study on the social representations (SRs) of sustainable energy shared by young citizens
(ages 11–12) in Narni, Italy, a small urban center with a history
intertwined with sustainable energy issues. In particular, the
study suggests that photovoice could be useful to jointly examine verbal and visual components of social representations and to