Cultural Conflict 2.0: The Dynamics of Religion, Media and Locality in North European Cities

Cultural Conflict 2.0 (2014-18) investigated how social media effects social relations in cities in Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands. We focused on the Instagram platform because (until June 2016 when new owners Facebook restricted access) this was the most accessible platform with the richest geo-coded and visual data, enabling us to examine the interplay between where and what people post, and the networks they form in posting and following. We developed new methods to investigate how people use social media in cities and the effects of this use, which we argue provide a useful supplement to existing social scientific methods, and when combined with them can enrich insights into social processes. Using these methods, we have investigated the online/offline lives of a variety of groups, including ethnic Danish converts to Islam and lifestyle clusters in Amsterdam and Kristiansand, and analysed posts related to national celebrations including King?s Day in the Netherlands and the 17th of May parades in Norway. Overall, our evidence suggests that whereas many accounts of social media emphasise either the egalitarian and participatory (?public sphere model?) or polarising and stigmatising (?wild west model?) effects of social media, we found that in everyday use social media platforms like Instagram have a rather socially conservative function, reinforcing existing social hierarchies and patterns of inclusion and exclusion.

We have developed new mixed methods and a tool to investigate the role of social media in urban processes and made these available through open release (tool), training, and publication in open access journals (Boy and Uitermark 2016, 2017). Our methods are widely read and cited, e.g. ibid. 2016 has been read 11724 times and cited 34 times (google scholar, 10.1.19). Our methods have yielded insights into the role of social media in urban processes, from transnational networks to the daily use of urban space and the experience of minorities using social media to respond to stigmatisation. We have contributed to theory development, (a) challenging prevalent models of the effects of social media on society by highlighting their role in replicating and re-enforcing existing social hierarchies and inequalities (b) theorising how these tendencies interacts with other polarising processes, both in Scandinavia (Herbert 2018) and in global cities (Herbert 2017).

This project will investigate the impact of media of different kinds and scales on the local politics of diversity in religiously and culturally plural areas of European cities. The early 21st century has been challenging for the relationship between reli gion and multiculturalism in European societies, with violent atrocities committed by different kinds of extremists (e.g. murder of Theo van Gogh, Utøya massacre), intense public arguments about the place of religion in public life, and widespread attack s on multiculturalism. Yet no public policy consensus has emerged on how to address the challenges faced. Recent evidence suggests that the media impact on local people and their relationships in a variety of ways: they provide the main sources of under standing of the lives of those beyond their immediate social circle; local policy makers understand themselves in terms of storylines in the media and shape their policies in anticipation of media reactions; transnational media provide a sense of connecti on to communities of origin; social media circulate stories about local issues, events and incidents, and facilitate public action of various kinds. However, while each of these processes has been studied separately, their interaction has not. For example , how might social media connections between local leaders influence their response to local events? How might transnational media connections influence local community relations? What shapes local responses to national and international news events? We shall examine these processes in religiously diverse neighbourhoods of two large 'global' and two smaller, 'provincial/ordinary' cities in Norway and the Netherlands. We'll combine analysis of social media networks, discourse analysis of media content and interviews with a range of community leaders to investigate media meanings and their uses. The relationship between the media and local politics is under-researched but vital to inform public debate and policy.