Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
PAPERS ON SOCIAL REPRESENTATIONS (PSR), cilt.30, sa.2, ss.1-24, 2021 (ESCI)
In contrast to the mainstream assumption that flashbulb memories (FBM)
of social events should be evaluated as autobiographical memories, some
researchers have recently suggested that they may also have various
social functions. This study aimed to investigate the July 15th,
2016 coup attempt in Turkey as an example of negative FBM and a social
representation (SR) by using both quantitative and qualitative data.
Participants (N = 343) responded to an online survey that
included questions measuring the quality of their memories and the
hierarchical evocations of the coup attempt. It was found that memories
of this event had the basic characteristics of FBM. Strong and weak FBM
groups differed from each other on phenomenological aspects of rehearsal
(social sharing and rumination) and vividness (visual relieving).
Findings also showed that, compared to the weak FBM group, participants
who were in the strong FBM group reported more evocations from the
central core of the general social representation, whereas they did not
differ in terms of the evocations from the periphery and the total
social representation. Regression analyses showed that the variance in
the number of evocations from the central core of the social
representation was predicted by the phenomenological aspect of surprise
and emotional valence. For the total number of evocations, however,
surprise was the only predictor among the phenomenological aspects.
Interestingly, age was not a significant predictor of the quality of the
FBM, whereas it predicted significant variance in the number of
evocations from the central core and the total evocations.