Silvia Capretti

The article presents the results of a research aimed at outlining, through a formal and content analysis of the press, the social representations of prostitution and of the actors involved in it. Four Italian newspapers over two different periods have been analysed. The research is based, on one hand, on the psycho-social theory of social representation and, on the other hand, on the sociological reflection about the role played by mass media in influencing social construction of reality. The results are read with the purpose to put together, in an idealtypic way, the fragmentation of the journalistic production in the three dimensions constituing a social representation (information, representation system, attitude). The degree of interconnection between the press and the dimension of the social representation has been highlighted. Prostitution is shown as an authentic press topic: the informative dimension of the social representation is strongly modelled by the media system’s needs. The phenomenon includes a wide representational system – which central nucleus consists of the idea of deviance –, and alternatively creates open and closed attitudes, according to the point of view adopted for its thematisation.