Ricerc@Sapienza

The aim of this contribution is to present some recent developments of the So.Re.Com. “A.S. de
Rosa” @-Library (Social Representations and Communication ‘A.S. de Rosa’ @-library), already
presented in previous publications ([1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9]) as multi-purpose web-platform
for documentation, training and networking in the supra-disciplinary field of Social Representations
and Communication
Among the many cross-thematic areas of supra-disciplinary interest (environment, health, education,
science and technology, communication, politics, economics, etc.) with the high societal impact, the
“migration studies” represent a relevant field of transversal knowledge across social sciences
developed by the researchers specifically working in “Social Representations and Communication”
and by social scientists inspired by other theories and disciplinary fields beyond social psychology.
There is a huge literature and documentation aimed at investigating and understanding the complex
phenomenon of “migration” on factual elements, that characterise the dynamic of “pull” and “push”
factors in the migratory flows in the history, alternating emigration/immigration from/towards countries
and world regions or even concurrent migratory flows from the same countries, and the impact with
host communities.
However in the multi-media communication system of our contemporary society this factual knowledge
is almost obscured by “polarised” social representations connoted by opposite attitudes pro-against
immigration and perceived as a contemporary emergency due to the “fear” or the “empathy” toward
the immigrants depicted as “invaders”, “potential terrorist”, “threat to the employment opportunities of
the citizens of their sovereign country”…. or as “victims”, “support for the economy of the country” as
workers in fields that no longer interest native citizens, “refugees” who escape from war or natural
disasters….The manipulation of emotions induced in the citizens by political leaders or other influential
authorities according to their different ideological positions and identity affiliations has a wide “echo
chamber” in the social media (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube….). However, at some extent,
the rhetorical device of these polarised views also organise the semantic dictionary of the policies
documents and scientific literature (even only as input for counter-arguments) making significant some
variables, like the author’s institutional affiliation geographical location in the specificities analysis .
Linked to a wide research program on migratory experiences and discourse, articulated in “multimedia”
and “field” studies - led by de Rosa since 2017 and developed in collaboration with a large
research team ([10], [11], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16], [17], [18], [19], [20], [21], [22], [23], [24], [25], [26],
[27], [28], [29], [30], [31], [32], [33]) - the acquisition of a huge documentation at several levels of the
discourse has been the occasion of recent developments of the So.Re.Com. “A.S. de Rosa” @-Library
through new filters. These specific web-tools further improve the @-library’s functionalities, allowing to
extract from distinct repositories the literature specifically inspired by Social Representations in a
separate or aggregate way by the literature inspired by other theories in social sciences and
communication studies, in view of detecting a large transversal corpus of sources toward a virtual
specialised cross-paradigmatic and cross-disciplinary repository on “migration studies”.
Selected results will be presented among those obtained by multidimensional analyses of data and
meta-data extracted from different repositories of the So.Re.Com. “A.S. de Rosa” @-Library.