Representations of Social Entrepreneurship: From Business in the Social Sphere to Public Participation
The relevance of this study is determined by the importance of the role of a social entrepreneur in determining ways for social problems solving based on the network interconnections of civil society. A social entrepreneur is able to become a new subject of social transformations, which is emphasized in the framework of the activist approach. New practices actualize the problem of integrating the socio-entrepreneurial group into social structure and its recognition as a socially significant community. Structuring the image of social entrepreneurship was based on the identification of the following semantic units of analysis: (1) the meanings of the “social” and “entrepreneurial” in activities of the subject; (2) the nature of the identifications; (3) features of the values produced by social entrepreneurs. <br></br> Based on the analysis of the texts, the following images were identified: social entrepreneurship as a social business, social service and social innovation. The latter image is most focused on social transformations, but it is presented fragmentary and has insufficient ability to generate the trust of other communicators due to the presence of negative identities in the discourse, the context of non-seriousness and the metaphors of exclusion.