Medias et Territoires (1) Cartes mentales des

C. Grasland, Univ. Paris Diderot / M2 SDT GEOPRISME / Villes et territoires d’Europe
Villes et Territoires d’Europe – Frontières et maillages (M2)
Medias et Territoires (1)
Cartes mentales des villes, pays et continents
Claude GRASLAND – Professeur de Géographie - Université Paris Diderot
Objectifs
Proposer un cadre théorique d’analyse des représentations mentales des villes pays et
continents à travers l’exemple du Projet FP7 EuroBroadMap (2009-2013)
Plan de cours
1. Un exemple de questionnaire
 Réponse au questionnaire
 Discussion des résultats
 Critique des questions
2. Cadrage théorique
 Le concept de carte mentale
 Héritages et anticipations
 Echelles spatiales et sociales
3. Comparaison de trois familles de méthodes
 Découpage sur une carte
 Classement et évaluation de lieux
 Déclaration de vocabulaire associé
Bibliographie
Beauguitte L., Didelon_Loiseau C. (2013), “L’Europe vue d’ici et d’ailleurs”, L’Espace Politique, 19, 1 [en
ligne], mis en ligne le 08 avril 2013, Consulté le 14 avril 2013, http://espacepolitique.revues.org/index2555.html
Brennetot, A., Emsellem, K., Guérin-Pace, F., & Garnier, B. (2013). “Dire l’Europe à travers le monde. Les
mots des étudiants dans l’enquête EuroBroadMap”. Cybergeo: European Journal of Geography.
Chaban, N., & Holland, M. (Eds.). (2014). Communicating Europe in times of crisis: External perceptions of
the European Union. Palgrave Macmillan.
Didelon C., De Ruffray S., Lambert N., Bocquet M. (2011), “A World of Interstices: A Fuzzy Logic
Approach to the Analysis of Interpretative Maps”, The Cartographic Journal, 48, 2, pp. 100-107.
Didelon-Loiseau, C., & Grasland, C. (2014). “Internal and external perceptions of Europe/EU in the world
through mental maps”. In: Chaban, N., & Holland, M. (Eds.). Communicating Europe in times of crisis: External
perceptions of the European Union, 65-94.
Sites Web
Projet EuroBroadMap (Site principal) : http://www.eurobroadmap.eu/
Projet EuroBroadMap (Rapports) : https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/EUROBROADMAP
Projet EuroBroadMap (Subjective Mapper) : http://www.ums-riate.fr/mapper/
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Document 1 : Un double processus de formation des cartes mentales
Social representations are usually defined as a set of knowledge and beliefs on objects and
concepts which help us to cope with the world around us (Dortier, 2002). They are cognitive
schemes used to “read” and understand the world, but as they are socially constructed they
can vary in space and times, even if they are often durable. In this general framework, this
chapter focuses on the representation of spatial objects (the world, Europe, the EU, countries)
and mobilises the concept of mental maps. This concept emerges in the 1960s from the
encounter between spatial psychology and geography. Psychologists generally focused on the
notion of cognitive space proposing the hypothesis that space is full of meanings and values.
Geographers tend to focus on the analysis of the link between representations of space and
spatial behaviour and practice (Lynch, 1960; Saarinen, 1987; Gould and White, 1997). Both
fields refer to the theory of “man’s shell” (Moles & Rohmer, 1978), or a series of circles
organized around the individual that define the level of knowledge of different places. In this
theory, closer spaces are the best known. The mental maps concept raises some issues that
underlie the theoretical model implemented in the EuroBroadMap project. Those issues are
organized by the coupling of individual and collective representations and imply both space
(distance from the object) and time (individual and collective times of both heritages and
perspectives).
In this chapter, mental maps are more precisely defined as social constructions of simplified
representations of places, likely to vary through space and time, that depends on both
information (knowledge filters) and targets (action filters) (Figure 1) (Grasland et al., 2012;
Didelon, 2011). In this perspective, the representation of the world depends firstly on a
knowledge database that is the result of information flows received from various sources at
different scales: personal experience, advice of parents or friends, national discourse taught in
textbooks, internet and global media. All this information can be considered as raw material
(Knowledge Database) that has to be quantified (knowledge level and quotation frequency)
and qualified (name given, definition and appreciation) by the student in order to elaborate a
more structured vision of the world (a Mental Map).
Source : Didelon-Loiseau & Grasland, 2014.
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Document 2 : Les échelles spatiales et sociales de formation des représentations
Knowledge and Action filters are relevant at the individual and collective level and constitute a multiplicity of
interlinked scale factors that contribute to explain the time and space variations of mental representations. Those
scale factors have to be understood as the multiple interactions between at least four levels of the social reality
that produce representations on spaces: the world level, the country level, the family (or social group) level and
the individual level (Figure 2). For each level, the time scales that influence the representation are quite different
but should be considered both toward the past (heritage) and future (perspectives). As mentioned in the
Introduction of this chapter, this framework is partly derived from the theory of the scales of social time
proposed by historian Braudel (1982). But it also introduces the idea of geographical scales as long as the
representations of places is not independent from various forms of distances between places, measured in
distance, time or cost units. Generally speaking, any kind of physical movement in space (such as migration or
trade) is anticipated and followed by flows of information. Generally, you will not migrate or trade with a place
from which you have received no information; but once you have migrated or traded, you have transmitted
information in both directions, and this will produce innovation in mental representation.
Document 3 : Trois approches empiriques des cartes mentales du Monde
The first approach focused on spatial definition and qualification of the World’s regions. Students surveyed were
asked to divide the world into 2 to 15 regions and then to name them. The aim was to analyze the representations
of the world produced by an intellectual exercise where the representations of the different places of the world
have to be gathered in same or different areas (Montello, 2003). The interpretation of the world regions is
enlightened by the names the respondents give to the areas. We focus then on the analysis of 'Europe' as a world
region to check 1) its existence in mental representations; 2) its spatial contours (how people draw it on a world
map); and 3) its semantic definitions (the names given to that part of space). This approach tests the knowledge,
yet it also allows an insight into an appreciation of global regions (through the names given to the object drawn).
The second approach is based on the quotation of the places where surveyed students would like to live. It deals
with the perception of desirable and undesirable countries in the world. It allows measuring both the knowledge
of the world’s places and their positive and negative perceptions in relation to the respondents’ place of
residence. This question was intentionally not related to a precise situation of choice where students would
indicate their target countries to study or work. A more general formulation of this question tries to catch a
general feeling of push-pull towards countries. This attitude is argued to depend on a variable mixture of
objective and subjective factors and is considered in our theoretical framework to be a result of a crosscombination of information sources applied to multi-purpose targets.
The third approach is based on the comparative analysis of semantic qualifications of the notion “Europe”
assigned by students in relation to the location of the survey. This aims to identify how a spatial object “Europe”
is qualified. In this approach, the question focuses more precisely on the notion of “Europe” (and not on “the
EU”). Importantly, after having drawn the limits of “Europe” on a map, the students were invited to produce
five words associated with the area. The aim was to check how the conceptual representation of “Europe” – after
this object has been delimited as a part of the world - varies across the different places surveyed.
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Document 4: Méthode des tracés cartographiques
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Document 4: Méthode des évaluations et classements
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Document 6 : Méthode des associations textuelles
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Document 7 : Exemple de questionnaire sur la perception du Monde (version simplifiée
du questionnaire EuroBroadMap)
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C. Grasland, Univ. Paris Diderot / M2 SDT GEOPRISME / Villes et territoires d’Europe
C.2) Quels sont les mots que vous associez le plus à “Europe”. Choisissez 5 mots au maximum
C.3) Quels sont les mots que vous associez le plus à “Afrique”. Choisissez 5 mots au maximum
C.4) Quels sont les mots que vous associez le plus à “Asie”. Choisissez 5 mots au maximum
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