Social perceptions of a police officer in a youth environment

Introduction. The representation of the policeman's image in the media is ambiguous. Social perceptions of this policeman phenomenon among different groups of young people are determined by a number of prerequisites and depend on the content broadcast in the mass media. Measuring the social perceptions of the professional policeman in the age groups will make it possible to determine where the direct impact of the content circulating in the mass media comes into “touch” with real-life interaction experiences. Materials and Methodical Toolkit. The sample consisted of 352 respondents of educational organizations. The structure of ideas about the image of a policeman was studied in groups of 12-17 and 18-25 year-olds by the method of the French psychologist P. Vergès. The survey was conducted on the Google forms platform in 2017-2018. The basis was the following criteria: the rank of occurrence and frequency of association. Results of the Survey and Conclusions. Positive and negative elements were established in social perceptions about the policeman. Ideas about the image of a policeman in both groups are expressed in associations: “uniform”, “law”, “protection”, “order”. However, in the group of 12-17 year-olds the association «uniform» ranks the first. A policeman's attractive appearance becomes an element of glorification which largely determines the positivity of the image. The peripheral system of social perceptions about the image of a policeman is represented by the words: “courageous”, “brave”, “smart”, “righteous”, “honest”, “help”. Associations with a negative semantic connotation “corruption” and “bribe” arise among respondents in the group of 18-25 year-olds. The association “respect” disappears from the content of social representation. The following associations that positively characterize the policeman as a person were not included in the zone of potential changes in the social representation of the group: “mind”, “courage”, “strict”. The associations allowed the researchers to form an understanding of the “social representation” of the image of a policeman in the youth environment, identify differences in social perceptions between the two age categories. In the answers, none of the respondents used words with feminine ending, excluding such as “uniform”, “protection”, “security”, etc., characterizing the functions but not the sex of a police officer. It is feasible to apply the obtained data for solving problems of formation and prediction of the content about the image of a police officer.