Project Portugal 2030

Summary

The erosion of trust in the Justice System and, consequently, in democracy is a current problem faced by every European country, including Portugal. To restore this trust is one of the most pressing challenges of national governments that hope to prevent citizens from becoming attracted to authoritarian regimes, adhering to deviant acts, or disinvesting from their country. This challenge, however, must be met with the evidence necessary to intervene in effective and efficient ways. As such, RISCk has two general objectives. Firstly, it aims to provide insights into the dimensions, causes and consequences of a perceived ineffective Justice System. Secondly, it aims to identify the messages that can be spread and actions that can be taken to restore trust in this system. Relatively to the first objective, smaller ones can be identified. Interventions, to be successful, must be preceded by a thorough diagnostics. This starts with the understanding of how the perception of an ineffective justice emerges. For that reason, this project will map the Portuguese’s social representations of the Justice System, connecting them to their valence, sociodemographic and psychological characteristics of the sample and the different sources of information participants use in their daily life. Additionally, this project aims to identify information about the Justice System disseminated by the media and politicians, through an analysis of the content and match with found social representations. Another objective is to track the dissemination of the information about justice on social media, in order to understand which information obtains which reactions. After identifying the origins and dimensions of the perception of an ineffective justice, it is important to understand which social representations are associated with which source of information, what behavior individuals are more motivated to perform (either normative or non-normative), as well as the consequences these behaviors may have on social cohesion. Thus, this project aims to explore how social representations about the Justice System associate with different behaviors and uncover the pattern of information that reinforces each of them, as well as the psychological processes involved and behaviors they predict. Moreover, it aims to identify the associations between different behaviors and consequences for social cohesion and support (or lack thereof) for the democratic system. The 2nd objective can also be subdivided into smaller ones. In order to identify the messages and actions needed to restore trust, this project aims to engage relevant stakeholders in a process of co-construction of narratives that are able to challenge negative social representations about the Justice System and consequent disruptive responses. This project also aims to test these stimuli so as to ascertain their effectiveness. This is an ambitious project that aims to integrate the perspectives of various stakeholders through mixed methodologies, which allow us to go deep and wide into this subject, assessing a phenomenon in its multiple dimensions, causes and consequences. Insights generated by this project will contribute to social psychology literature, as well as be useful for other scientific areas such as political science, social communication and criminology. Moreover, these insights are expected to be used by professionals (namely from the media and Justice) to design interventions implemented among citizens.