Anchoring

By communication social representations are anchored again and again in other social representations. This is a kind of cultural assimilation by which new social representa­tions are incorporated into the well-known ones simultaneously as the latter ones are transformed by the new ones. Gradually then the unfamiliar ideas become well-known ideas and part of the collective frames of references of a society. In short anchoring means that new ideas or phenomenon are related to a well-known phenomenon or con­text. Stuart Hall is touching upon such a mechanism in his classical work “Encoding and decoding in the television discourse”.

New, problematic or troubling events, which breach our expectancies and run counter to our “common-sense constructs”, to our “taken-for-granted” knowledge of social structures, must be assigned to their discursive domains before they can be said to “make sense”. The most common way of “mapping” them is to assign the new within some domain or other of the existing “maps of problematic social reality”. (Hall 1973/1999: 57)

Hall’s “common-sense construct” and “taken-for-granted knowledge” in the quote above are close to the concept of social representation, and the “mapping” mechanism he describes is basically an anchoring mechanism by which something new is attached to something already known. He however does not dwell any further into this as done within social representations theory.

We may here differentiate between a number of anchoring mechanisms: naming, emotional anchoring, thematic anchoring, metaphoric anchoring and anchoring via basic antinomies.

Naming

A most common way of giving the foreign or unknown phenomenon a more well-known face is to name it. By naming something, “we extricate it from a disturbing anonymity to endow it with a genealogy and to include it in a complex of specific words, to locate it, in fact, in the identity matrix of our culture” (Moscovici 2000: 46). In this way the phenomenon is liberated from secrecy and incomprehensibility. A new political group may be named as terrorists, a new ill-health is called the Black Death of our age, the complex scientific phenomenon climate change may shortly be labelled as the weather, and so on.

Naming often appears in headlines and introductions in the media, and even a vague naming may liberate the unknown from total incomprehensibility. In a series of articles about climate change of a Swedish tabloid the complex phenomenon simply was named as “climate threat”, “weather”, “weather alarm”, or “the catastrophe” (Aftonbladet 061101-061130). A British newspaper named a pro-vegan campaign focusing meat eaters’ role in causing global warming as “hot campaign” (headline: “Heather Mills launches HOT! Campaign” Guardian.co.uk, November 19, 2007).

These acts of namings forge the abstract issue of climate change into recognizable frames of references, or as Moscovici (2000: 46) puts it, locate it in the identity matrix of our culture. Weather is a most common topic of everyday small talk, a lot of people are documenting their own weather observations in diaries, and the weather inevitably affects everyday life. It is everybody’s concern. And we do not want the weather to be too hot, or too cold, or too stormy, etc. Words as “threat”, “alarm”, “hot” or “catastrophe” brings in a dramatic dimension and anchors the issue in well-known media discourses of threat, catastrophe and alarm reports. A number of studies have confirmed that the media increasingly supply their audiences with such reports (Altheide 2002; Robertson 2001).

With his special interest in science and everyday thinking, Moscovici argues that naming is necessary to as well thinking and communication as to social cooperation in a society, and he insists that naming neither should be seen as biasing or diminishing of the original object or phenomenon. Instead he points out that naming may enrich the object and give it new dimensions and qualities (Moscovici 2000).

Classifying and naming sometimes may, however, as Lippman (1998/1922) once noted be strongly connected to processes of stereotyping. Naming someone as a for­eigner, a deviant or a fundamentalist, or naming a behaviour an act of madness or a terror attack are not neutral classifications. To put it in the wordings of Lippman (1998/1922: 119) such namings rather are “loaded with preferences, suffused with affection or dis­like”. Stereotyping is specifically related to the naming of social groups and to questions of inclusion and exclusion, discrimination, power and domination (Pickering 2001). Stereotyping “creates the illusion of precision in defining and evaluating other people”, and “they are then fixed into marginal positions or subordinate status and judged ac­cordingly” (Pickering 2001: 5).

Stereotypical naming is doubly fraudulent. Firstly, the “Other” is attributed taken for granted negative characteristics, which we conceive as naturalized. The naming therefore give an illusion of being realistic, that is, we do not see them as social constructions. It is so. Secondly, stereotypical namings confirm themselves when, as they are, used over and over again. It really is so.

Emotional Anchoring

Emotional anchoring is an attachment mechanism that is not specifically pointed out in the theory of social representations although Moscovici now and then addresses emo­tions. For example in his writings about social representations of money he brings in emotions of passions and desire (Moscovici 1993). Also in Jodelet’s (1991) work on madness emotional aspects are discussed, and Joffe (2002: 568-569) argues for that social representations theory “keeps a space for symbols, infused with an emotional valence. It is emotion that motivates the formation of particular SRs [social representa­tions]”. Explicitly, however, very little has been written about the role of emotions. This fact ha also been noted by Joffe (2002: 569): “the role of emotion has received surpris­ingly little attention “. I will here argue for the need to more explicitly take emotions into consideration in social representations theory. Emotional anchoring then refers to a communicative process by which a new phenomenon is fastened to well-known emo­tions. By this the unknown gets recognizable as, for example, a threat or a danger to fear, something to worry for, or as something nice and pleasurable. As shown by psychologi­cal research emotions may help us to interpret and judge social situations and objects (Bless, Fiedler & Struck 2004). The mass media willingly exploit this, often maybe in superficial and speculative ways. Social phenomena, events or courses of events are anchored in feelings of fear or an approaching threat, or in feelings of anger, pity or compassion. According to Furedi (2006: xiii) the increasing stream of scare stories in the media are even transforming Western culture into a culture of fear in which “fear feeds on itself and creates the disposition to speculate about other hazards lurking around the corner”. Climate change has found to be anchored by the media in a mixture of well-known emotions of fear, hope, guilt, compassion and nostalgia (Höijer 2010). By this is the scientific phenomenon of climate change turned into a social representation we can compare with other current social phenomena attached to similar emotions such as terrorism or a number of environmental risks. The study concluded: “in short we may regard climate change as something to collectively fear, but there is hope if we behave in a climate friendly fashion. If we do not, we should feel guilt. Media further invites us to feel compassion for endangered species and nostalgia for the idyllic past we are about to lose” (Höijer 2010).

Emotional anchoring may be embedded in the language used, and/or in the photo­graphic pictures or illustrations. The example below illustrates how a tabloid news paper by explicitly putting blame on the individual who does not behave climate friendly an­chored climate change in emotions of individual and collective guilt. Guilt is a socially constructed emotion and concerns violations of social codes and norms (Giddens 1991), in this case an implicitly proclaimed code of avoiding Brazilian meat, cacao and soap.

You are eating up the forest … Have you bought Brazilian meat or cocoa? There is a large risk that you are contributing to climate change. … Swedish consum­ers could be supporting the destruction of the rain forest when they buy popular Brazilian meat, cocoa or soap. (Aftonbladet 061110)

Emotionally anchoring may be related to other forms of anchoring or to processes of objectifications (see below). For example, naming climate change as “climate threat”, or talking about biotechnology in terms of pollution metaphors (Levidow 2000) anchor these phenomena in emotions of fear and anxiety.

Thematic Anchoring

Anchoring may also take place at more basic thematic levels by the use of underlying categories of meaning, antinomies such as life/death or culture/nature etc., or by the use of metaphors.

Moscovici (2000; 2001) uses the concept of theme to catch the structural in-depth levels of social representations. He argues that underlying collective, general patterns of thinking or primary ideas in interplay with specific contexts generates and structures new social representations. These so called themes, or themata in plural (Markova 2003; Moscovici 2000), are in themselves socially and culturally constructed and maintained by social processes. According to Moscovici (2000: 163) they “have been created by society and remained preserved by society”. Since themes “never reveal themselves clearly” (Moscovici 2000: 182) the analysis of talk, interviews, or media products often must move beyond the specific language and visuals used.

Themes may be conceived of in ways that come close to the concept of ideology regarded as common sense thinking or taken-for-granted ideas in a society or among groups (cf., Billig 1991; van Dijk 1998) for example democracy, human rights or equality (Moscovici 2001). A number of such underlying themes may be identified in analyses of the media. Continuing with examples from climate change a study found that individualization and nationalization were two prominent themes, (in the referred study also labelled ideological horizons), in Swedish news media (Berglez, Höijer & Olausson 2009). The following example shows how the theme of self-glorification nationalism takes place in the reporting on climate change. The glorification is present in wordings such as “the one country in the world” and “if we cannot make it, nobody else probably will”:

Sweden is perhaps the one country in the world that most easily can get rid of its oil dependency. … If we cannot make it, nobody else probably will! We have the chance to prove that it is possible. (Aftonbladet 061102)

Themes may also be assigned to more universal ideas inscribed into language (Moscovici 2000). Taking this as her starting point Markova (2003) has developed the concept of theme from the ontological position of a dialectical or dialogical human consciousness based on the ability to imagine and communicate with the Other.

Anchoring in Antinomies

Dialogicality means, according to Markova (2003), that sense making is founded on a capacity to make distinctions, to think in oppositions, polarities, or antinomies. Similar to this Billig (1993) claims that human thinking is based on capacity to negate: accept versus turn away, justify versus criticize, etc. This creates tensions and dynamics in society, which may lead to change and development. In all societies antinomies such as life/death, human being/nature, we/them, fear/hope, freedom/oppression, and so on exists.

In specific socio-historical contexts antinomies related to a social phenomenon may become a source of tension, conflict or problem and the phenomenon part of public debate. It is in such situations that new social representations are developed, according to Markova (2003).

Analysing oppositional distinctions or antinomies thus turns focus to intrinsic ten­sions, which may be especially marked in periods when new social representations develop. Taking social representations of climate change as a case, antinomies such as certainty/uncertainty, threat/hope, guilty/not guilty, nature/culture, global/local may organize the discourse (Höijer 2008; Olausson 2010). For example the distinction guilty/not guilty was reflected over and over again in the reporting on climate change of a Swedish tabloid newspaper (Höijer 2010). The grown-up world was presented as guilty, in principle all adults in the West: “If everyone lived as we do in the West it would take five planets to maintain our consumption of natural resources” (Aftonbladet 061116), while the innocent ones were children and animals: “What do you tell your sons, three and five years old, about the climate threat?” (Aftonbladet, 061110); “The baby walrus draws its final breath … a victim of climate change in the Arctic Ocean” (Aftonbladet, 061108). Olausson (2010) found that underlying Swedish media further was an antinomy or oppositional distinction between us/them. In her discussion of how a European iden­tity is constructed in news media on climate change she suggests that this is established:

by means of the depiction of a conflictual relationship between “Us”, the EU, who acknowledge climate change as a serious threat and want to take action against it, and “Them”, the USA, who refuse to even discuss regulations. (Olausson 2010)

The relationship between themes and antinomies is somewhat unclear in the theory.

Moscovici (2000) considers themes as “basic ideas”, “pre-existing thought”, or “primary ideas” while according to Markova (2003) antinomies are more basic also underlying themes. This makes sense if we for example think about ideological themes such as nationalism or individualism, which are hard to conceive of without the coun­terparts of internationalism or collectivism. In analysing a specific discourse, however, anchoring a social issue in a specific theme (e.g. individualism) may dominate the dis­course and its counterpart (collectivism) may be discursively absent. If we emphasize the concrete communication practices thematic anchoring may occur without anchoring in antinomies.

It is worth noting also that anchoring in antinomies may appear without thematic anchoring since “not all antinomies of thinking become themata” (Markova 2003: 184).

Anchoring by Methaphors

Metaphors make things and phenomena comprehensible by imagining them as something else, for example “life is a journey” or “time is money”. A study on social representations of the EU found that people used metaphors such as “milk lakes” and “butter mountains”, originating from the media, when referring to food surpluses within the EU (Wagner & Hayes 2005). The media reports on “human shields” in wars and conflicts, “war” and “sport” metaphors are common in news reporting on many topics, etc.

Some metaphors are universal while many others reflect cultural variations (Kövecses 2005), and there may also exist even more specifically situated metaphors. According to Lakoff and Johnson (2003) everyday language is permeated with metaphors. They even claim that all thinking and communicating basically is metaphoric.

There is great variety of metaphors and many attempts to classifications have been made. According to Ritchie (2006) some metaphors are more everyday-like (busy as a bee), other poetical (life is a dream), some complex with various meanings (life is a struggle), still others more one-dimensional (the party got out of hand). Root metaphors are those long-lived metaphors permeating cultures, for example conduit, contain and war metaphors (Kövecses 2005). St.Clair (2002) notes that growth-metaphors, play-metaphors, drama-metaphors, machine-metaphor, and time- and room-metaphors for a long time have stamped European thinking.

Anchoring social phenomena in metaphors may serve ideological and legitimating functions. Stibbe (2001) found that metaphors of war and of forest fire dominated British media reporting on the mad-cow disease and that this justified drastic measures to be taken. Illness and death were two close metaphors in the media reporting on climate change (Höijer 2008). The planet was repeatedly described as “sick” on its way to “die” and a number of animals were about to be “killed” by the climate change. These metaphors not only underline the seriousness of the issue but also relate to our own existential anxiety and, in the specific media context studied, legitimated individual acting to mitigate carbon dioxide.

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