Social Representations of the War in Italy during the Russia/Ukraine Conflict

Social representations of the war, anchored in historical experience and cultural values, play a mo-tivational role in justifying collective behavior. Following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the re-search delves into the meanings associated with war through a social representation approach. Employing Doise’s sociodynamic approach, researchers identify the semantic field linked with war and analyze its organizing principles, revealing the variability of representations. In total, 313 Ital-ian participants (female = 241, 75.4%; age range = 18–74) completed a questionnaire featuring a free association task with the word “war”, providing demographic and political and religious ori-entation data. Lexical correspondence analysis, utilizing Spad-t software, highlights three polarized themes: the emotional dimension aroused by war, media-conveyed imagery, and the underlying causes of conflict. The social anchoring analysis projects variables such as gender and political ori-entation onto a factorial plane. Finally, cluster analysis dissects psychological anchoring, identify-ing four distinct groups characterized by their descriptions of war: effects, reasons, emotions, and images. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.