Xenotransplantation is animal abuse - using Moscovici's 'social objects' concept to address the move away from expert information
I am considering the relevance of Serge Moscovici's theory of social representations to think about public discourses about organ donation online. This would have been simpler before the internet, when the 'social objects' put in movement by the press around such a complex subject were likely to be in alignment with those from expert systems in the fields of medicine, education, and government agencies. These days, when one looks at public discourses on the internet, such alignment is still seemingly in place but one only needs to dig slightly beneath the surface to find this is far from being the case. Consider the Mail Online's coverage of an article which linked the first implantation of a genetically modified pig's heart into a man with UK-based reporting. Using a range of sources, the headline speculated that such procedures would take place on a routine basis in the UK within ten years. A Mail Online article published on 12 January 202...