THE SOCIAL REPRESENTATION OF CLOUD COMPUTING ACCORDING TO BRAZILIAN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY PROFESSIONALS

ABSTRACT This study seeks to identify the social representation of Cloud Computing as perceived by Brazilian Information Technology (IT) professionals. Using accessibility criteria, 221 IT professionals were chosen as respondents to an online questionnaire. Using Social Representation Theory (SRT), the techniques of free evocation of words, the Vergès' framework, and implicative, lexical, and content analysis were performed. Analyzing the social representation of cloud computing yielded associated words such as cloud, storage, availability, Internet, virtualization, and security, implying that Brazilian IT professionals have a primarily operational, rather than strategic, approach to cloud computing. This paradigm is based on issues related to the safety and availability of cloud data, and the results match other scientific literature on this subject. The theoretical contribution of this research lies in the use of SRT. The integrated use of implicative, lexical, and content analyses may be used for a better examination of constructs in the future.

摘要 本研究旨在探究巴西信息技术（Information Technology, IT）从业者眼中云计算的社会表征。本研究采用便利抽样标准，选取221名IT从业者作为在线问卷的受访者。依托社会表征理论（Social Representation Theory, SRT），本研究运用词语自由唤起法、韦尔热斯（Vergès）分析框架以及蕴含分析、词汇分析与内容分析等研究技术。通过对云计算的社会表征进行分析，得到的关联词汇包括云、存储、可用性、互联网、虚拟化与安全等，这表明巴西IT从业者对云计算的认知主要偏向操作层面，而非战略层面。该认知范式聚焦于云数据的安全与可用性相关议题，研究结果与该领域其他学术文献的结论相符。本研究的理论贡献在于运用了社会表征理论。未来可整合运用蕴含分析、词汇分析与内容分析，以更好地考察相关研究构念。