city1
TRANSCRIPT
This article was downloaded by: [University of California, San Diego]On: 03 April 2013, At: 19:57Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
MobilitiesPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rmob20
City Branding and Social Inclusion inthe Glocal CityMaria Cristina Paganoni aa Department of Contemporary Languages and Cultures, Faculty ofPolitical Science, Università degli Studi di Milano, Milan, ItalyVersion of record first published: 19 Jan 2012.
To cite this article: Maria Cristina Paganoni (2012): City Branding and Social Inclusion in the GlocalCity, Mobilities, 7:1, 13-31
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17450101.2012.631809
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE
Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.
The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representationthat the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of anyinstructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primarysources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings,demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly orindirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.
City Branding and Social Inclusion in theGlocal City
MARIA CRISTINA PAGANONI
Department of Contemporary Languages and Cultures, Faculty of Political Science, Università degliStudi di Milano, Milan, Italy
ABSTRACT This article begins with a re-assessment of city branding that focuses on themarketing strategies routinely employed to promote a competitive identity for the contempo-rary ‘glocal’ city, before moving on to the issue of social inclusion. Combining a socio-semi-otic approach with recent insights from urban studies, it explores a sample of 12 British citycouncil websites to discuss to what extent web-mediated communication, within the moderni-sation agenda espoused by local authorities, may effectively help to represent and give voiceto today’s multicultural and migrant urban communities. The article adopts a critical read-ing of municipal websites with the aim of understanding how a social inclusion agenda canbe incorporated into the authoritative and functional discourse typically used by the sitesand proposes that the onset of new interactive technologies, such as blogs and social net-works, do have significant democratic potential in this respect, even though their incorpora-tion into the sites is still at a preliminary stage. As such, the article is concerned with howflows of information and people are coming together in the early twenty-first century andtransforming what began as a static textual/discursive space into one that is responsive tothe flux of the contemporary city. At the time of writing, this is very much a communicationrevolution in the making, with the new interactive portals sitting somewhat awkwardlyalongside information-based web pages and links. In addition, the article investigates theways in which the sites attempt to present their cities as diasporic, cosmopolitan and ‘gloca-lized’ spaces, paying particular attention to the subjugated discourse of migration and theway that the cities’ non-white population is fixed and bounded by aesthetic and discursivemeans.
KEY WORDS: City branding; cosmopolitanism; diasporas; e-governance; migration; newmedia; social semiotics; urban policy; visual discourse
Setting the Scene
One of the most recent examples of place branding, city branding has evolved froma simple application of marketing techniques to potential tourist destinations into a
Correspondence Address: Maria Cristina Paganoni, Dipartimento di Lingue e Culture Contemporanee,Università degli Studi di Milano, Piazza Indro Montanelli 1, 20099 Sesto S. Giovanni (MI), Italy.Email: [email protected]
MobilitiesVol. 7, No. 1, 13–31, February 2012
1745-0101 Print/1745-011X Online/12/010013–19 � 2012 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17450101.2012.631809
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f C
alif
orni
a, S
an D
iego
] at
19:
57 0
3 A
pril
2013
sophisticated tool of contemporary web governance in the hands of publicadministration (Anholt, 2006; Trueman et al., 2007; De Michelis, 2008; Koller,2008). As the nature and quality of communication with the public gains salienceamong political pledges, local governments have come to realize how important itis for a city, town or borough to establish a competitive, cosmopolitian identity inthe contemporary world. By refurbishing their communication strategies, both inter-nal (that is, addressed to permanent residents, local entrepreneurs and students) andexternal (addressed to potential residents – ‘immigrants’, tourists and investors),today’s ‘world cities’ (Massey, 2007) are effectively seeking to bring their ‘informa-tion flows’ (Appadurai, 1996) in line with an urban population that is multicultural,mobile and frequently transient. Significantly, the practice of city branding has beenincorporated within the wider EU policy agenda,1 which also sets the guidelines forurban regeneration.
In a world made smaller by digital communication where ‘global andsubnational processes and formations are destabilizing scalar hierarchies centered inthe nation-state’ (Sassen, 2007, p. 4), the web has opened up unprecedented formsof proximity and mobility, among them virtual travel, through which ‘communica-tions are increasingly freed from location’ (Urry, 2007, p. 158). Cities are thusstrongly encouraged to network in a global, digitized arena in order to become partof those new linkages that bind them across national borders and lead today’s ‘pro-cess of recentralization’ (Sassen, 2006, p. 63): multinational firms involved in man-ufacturing and specialized services like ‘finance, accounting, law and advertising’(Sassen, 2006, p. 56), deregulated markets, and cultural initiatives (such asdesignating sister cities or hosting international exhibitions and big cultural andsports events).
Thanks to digital networks and these more material global flows of people andgoods, then, ‘the local level turns out to be a micro-environment with global span’(Sassen, 2004, p. 652) and cities are compelled to compete with one another evenmore fiercely. In response to the inter-urban competition characteristic of the newpost-national dynamic of globalization, an official web presence is increasinglyregarded as an indispensible branding tool and is included within the modernizationagendas of many local governments. Here, there is often the equally strategic aimof implementing ‘New Public Management’ paradigms and transforming the rela-tionships between the public sector and society (Torres et al., 2005). In response tothis agenda, today’s digital cities are increasingly becoming involved in the promo-tion of branded social networking media and mobile applications, even thoughmunicipal websites throughout Europe have (over the past decade) acquired theconventionality of a well-established communicative genre. The latter ischaracterized by the functionality of an easily reproducible design: a repository ofcollectively-provided e-services which work as the building blocks of a web portalthat informs citizens about the local administration and its services and attempts toestablish some kind of dialogue with its users, as well as promote the city brandglobally.
In light of this social policy revolution, and within the terrain of the ongoingresearch in the field of urban studies, the aim of the article is to investigate aspecific aspect of city branding in the public sector: that is, the effectiveness of (inthis instance, British) city council websites in favouring social inclusion. After apreliminary discussion about potentialities and pitfalls of a city’s web presence, the
14 M.C. Paganoni
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f C
alif
orni
a, S
an D
iego
] at
19:
57 0
3 A
pril
2013
framework for a socio-semiotic analysis of city council websites will be introduced,followed by a concrete case study focused on 12 British municipalities.
As a form of public service, municipal websites aim not only to promote a citybrand but also to grant membership to a civic community by enhancing publicaccess and citizens’ engagement through an adequate representation of the sociallandscape. However, the extent to which a municipal website may encourage socialinclusion and e-democracy thanks to the innovative use of Information and Com-munication Technology (ICT) remains debatable. First, the somewhat utopianexpectations associated with ‘ICT developments as radically reshaping society and,by extension, cities’ (Cohen-Blankshtain et al., 2004, p. 2648) constantly clash withthe presence of old and new ‘urban marginalities’,2 often worsened rather than aba-ted by the digital divide because of the unequal mastery of ICT skills and access to‘network capital’ – that is, ‘the capacity to engender and sustain social relationswith those people who are not necessarily proximate and which generates emo-tional, financial and practical benefit’ (Urry et al., 2007, p. 197). Despite the muchcelebrated ‘death of distance’ that should have been initiated by the digital revolu-tion (Cairncross, 1997), it still holds true that ‘separation’ (the fact that humangroups can ontologically, geographically and psychologically inhabit discontinuousspaces) remains a dominant trait of contemporary urban life. In particular, a signifi-cant tension exists between the notion of a ‘public’ (with connotations of social andcivic inclusion) and the anonymity intrinsic to large flows of people and nationaland municipal bureaucracy. Indeed, as Cohen-Blanksthtain has observed, ‘bothdistance and cities are far from being dead and geography still matters’ (Cohen-Blankshtain et al., 2004, p. 264).
Second, it is frequently observed that the public sector is deeply permeatedwith the promotional ideology and discourse of corporate communication, whichtends to override social concerns (Olins, 2003; Koller, 2008) and emphasize theentrepreneurial and cosmopolitan dimensions of the contemporary city over com-munity needs and problems (Young et al., 2006). Following this line of argument,therefore, municipal websites would seem to provide a further example of the per-vasive marketisation of the social typical of contemporary capitalism, with itsblurring of boundaries between the private and the public sector (Arvidsson,2006; Fairclough, 2006) and the drawbacks associated with it: disguised forms ofhegemony, ubiquitous surveillance, as well as ‘private sector colonisation of pub-lic cultural terrain’ (Vickery, 2007, p. 25). This consequently camouflages the hardfacts of inequality through bland neoliberal rhetoric that promotes multiculturalismand social inclusion without addressing the underlying social and economic base(Levitas, 2005).
Though a critique of the appropriation of the public sphere by the logic of market-ing with the concomitant risk of citizens’ de-politicization is clearly well grounded,other views can be heard in partial defence of the empowering potential of ICT (Cas-tells, 2000; Coleman, 2005; Paganoni, 2007; Jones, 2008) in what Craven and Well-man (1973) describe as today’s ‘network city’ (where ‘both citizenship andrepresentation become more fragmented, pluralized and decentred’ [Coleman, 2005,p. 184]). For all these theorists, ICT has created a new form of dialogic citizenshipthrough the ‘information architecture’ of web semiotics and Web 2.0 interactivity.This has brought about a radical disruption of reading practices (Kress, 2003) and achange in how we access and receive information. As is well illustrated by the OpenGovernment initiatives towards unlocking public records to improve citizen-centric
City Branding and Social Inclusion 15
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f C
alif
orni
a, S
an D
iego
] at
19:
57 0
3 A
pril
2013
participatory governance,3 disintermediation – the direct, real-time and interactivelink between citizens and government made possible by Web 2.0 – has arguablyfostered more democratic forms of exchange, citizenship and political activism (Cole-man, 2005). However, in the face of the very clear tensions between the objectives ofcity branding and those of social inclusion, one of the main challenges of web gover-nance for local governments appears to be the complex translation of the corporateinto the civic through a cultural narrative which is able to promote the logic of‘embodied democracy’ over that of marketing.
Recognising that social polarisation and patterns of exclusion are becomingmore pervasive does not compel the reading of every unfolding process in thistenor. Urban theorists and researchers need also to be alert to instances wherethe spaces of the city might be becoming more inclusive, less divided. Indeed,if it is not possible to recognise the new solidarities and new collectivities thaturban life is constantly generating, there is little chance that it will be possibleto invent imaginative, viable solutions to the genuine problems posed by thecontemporary city. (Latham, 2003, p. 1719)
Following Latham’s recommendation, city council websites are analyzed herevis-à-vis their potential for ‘imaginative, viable solutions’ to the problem of socialcohesion. The underlying mission is thus to understand how web-based narrativesof social inclusion may add depth to the ‘urban imaginary’ and a city’s brand iden-tity and contribute to legitimizing or contesting social structures and cultural prac-tices. Further, as no epistemology of representation is ever transparent, and semioticpower and social power influence each other, the political dimension of web-medi-ated communication is also of crucial importance: encoding the ‘cultural thickness’of the contemporary city into digital maps becomes a way of foregrounding (oromitting) civic issues deeply connected with the experience of place. Indeed, as theimaginaries thus evoked ‘are grounded in actual constructions of space and time asthey are practically experienced through people’s engagement in the world’(Fairclough, 2006, p. 23), the role of municipal websites in ‘the social constructionand re-construction of space-times’ is potentially of much greater importance thanthe simple provision of online, public-facing services. In other words, the power ofthe representational choices inherent in municipal websites vis-à-vis migrationpolicy, multiculturalism and the ‘politics of reterritorialization’ more generallyshould not be underestimated.
Methods and the Selection of the Dataset
As multimodal texts that rely on the deployment of multiple semiotic resources(words, still and moving images, the use of colour and sound) for meaning-making,websites are intangibles that demonstrate well the constitutive power of semiosis inthe symbolic economies of our knowledge-based society (Lash & Urry, 1994) inwhich ‘the exchange of capitals hinges on the promotion of ideals, images and life-styles in discourse’ (Aiello & Thurlow, 2006, p. 149).
Within the digital strategies of local governments, informed by the need to cir-culate and network a city’s dynamic social capital, municipal websites represent animportant tool in the construction of a glocal city brand. Here it is useful to applythe classic model of Goffmann’s ‘participation framework’ (1981) to the forms of
16 M.C. Paganoni
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f C
alif
orni
a, S
an D
iego
] at
19:
57 0
3 A
pril
2013
interaction thus promoted in order to recognize how versatile these forms need tobe in terms of ‘footing’ (the relationship they establish with potential addressees).To communicate their brand, municipalities have to establish multiple and parallelchannels with segmented audiences (different groups of permanent residents, as wellas investors and visitors) that are not geographically contiguous, demographicallysimilar or empathetic. By representing and addressing their potential publics locallyand globally, they act as laboratories in which places are re-imagined and new rela-tional networks envisaged.
The analysis of city websites considered here has been conducted through amultidisciplinary approach that draws upon the contributions of social semiotics forthe encoding of social processes in cultural artefacts (Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996,2001; van Leeuwen & Jewitt, 2001; Kress, 2003; van Leeuwen, 2005) and those ofCritical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 2006) for its understanding of the complexrelationship between public discourse and ideology. A third domain this study tapsinto is the literature on place branding, which includes marketing-oriented contribu-tions (Anholt, 2006, 2008) together with more critical readings of brand communi-cation along a linguistically-informed perspective (Koller, 2008), as well as acultural studies approach to the notion of the urban imaginary (De Michelis, 2008).Further, inasmuch as the ‘social inclusion’ aspect of the websites with which thestudy is centrally concerned is focused, in particular, on the representation and par-ticipation of migrant and diasporic subjects, the analysis very clearly falls withinthe general remit of mobilities research (Urry, 2007).
For the research project on which this article reports, a selection of Britishmunicipal websites was chosen according to the rationale that, among Europeannations, the UK can be taken as a benchmark for its public-sector use of ICT. Thisis on account of the sustained commitment shown by the UK government (throughthe past decade) to deliver e-services to an ever-larger constituency of people and aconsistent history of public policy decision-making, all resulting in modernizinggovernance. While building an attractive ‘place identity’ was listed as a keyobjective in New Labour’s planning policy directives (Vickery, 2007), the ‘DigitalBritain’ report, first published in October 2008, and then finalized in June 2009,championed innovation in ICT nationwide. In addition, special mention should bemade of the 2008 commitment to deliver a ‘Digital Inclusion Action Plan’ to pro-mote social equality and to form a ‘Digital Inclusion Taskforce’, whose mission isto help disseminate digital skills ‘ensuring that disadvantaged groups are helped toget online and benefit from digital communications’ (Communications ConsumerPanel website). Governmental awareness of the importance of good online commu-nication in the public sector to increase social cohesion has been attended with theeffort to deliver more attractive and user-friendly online content (Holden, 2007),4
which has encouraged the engagement of the creative industries in what has beendefined as culture-led urban regeneration (Vickery, 2007).5 Besides the above-men-tioned Open Government Licence (2010), this encompassing and relativelylong-standing political culture supportive of e-governance policies has led to theexcellent design of the Directgov website (Gnoli et al., 2006; Rosati, 2007). Thisofficial UK government platform for citizens – offering ‘public services all in oneplace’ – was extremely innovative in terms of the usability and circularity of itsinformation architecture.6 Moreover, an investment in web literacy looks set ‘to fea-ture prominently’ in the new (2010) Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition since
City Branding and Social Inclusion 17
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f C
alif
orni
a, S
an D
iego
] at
19:
57 0
3 A
pril
2013
‘digital inclusion sits comfortably within the Big Society concept, and claims to offersmaller, cheaper, government without a reduction in services’ (Hickman, 2010).7
The focus for data collection has been provided by the independent City Mayorswebsite (http://www.citymayors.com): ‘an international think tank for urban affairs,consisting of professionals working together to promote strong and prosperous citiesas well as good local government’.8 The site contains a wealth of quantitative dataand statistics about urban centres, worldwide and in individual countries. Followinga 2009 City Mayors classification, the list of the 10 largest British cities9 – London,Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Sheffield, Bradford, Liverpool, Edinburgh,Manchester, Bristol – was extended to include Cardiff and Belfast (respectivelyranking sixteenth and twenty-second), in order to provide a more inclusive selectionof urban centres in the UK’s ‘four nations’. The fact that declining industrial citiesand ports like Bradford, Bristol, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester andSheffield, which have been forced to undertake major rebranding in recent years,figure in the selection has added more depth to the analysis by suggesting howplace branding has become a form of responsibility towards struggling civic com-munities.
The 12 council websites were regularly accessed from August 2009 to Novem-ber 2009, during which period the Birmingham website was renovated. The web-sites were checked again in June 2010 to find that, in the few months elapsing, theuse of social networking facilities, such as Facebook and, especially, Twitter, havebeen increasingly adopted by city councils in their bid to make the sites even moreinteractive. While a link on the Greater London Authority website allows users to‘retweet’ (to forward useful chunks of information),10 all the city councils here sur-veyed have now opened their own Twitter accounts (more than one in some cases),hence adding microblogging to their communication strategies.
Website Analysis
Building on the assumption that city council websites have become an institutional-ized digital genre for local administrations, the following analysis has focussed oncommonalities rather than differences, giving priority to recurrent generic traits andcomparable visual/verbal discursive features. The understanding of the commonsemiotic processes at work on the websites has then been followed by a discussionon the embedding of social inclusion issues as part of the city’s global and (asexpanded below) glocal identity.
The intrinsic trans-boundary potential of web-mediated communication makescity branding a practice that takes place in a virtual arena where, in order to com-pete in the global market place, cities have tended to adopt converging representa-tional standards. This attempt to create a distinctive and specific ‘local’ identity forone’s city through the deployment of highly conventionalized, ‘global’ brandingmechanisms is, indeed, one of the more paradoxical expressions of glocalization tomanifest itself in recent times (as well as one that would seem to realize the gloom-ier predictions of Bauman [1998], Beck [2000] and others regarding the semiotichomogenization of ‘place’ as the result of globalization per se). Not surprisingly,therefore, the design framework of city council websites emulates the criteria ofself-representation already well-tested in the corporate sphere: from the logo (usu-ally placed in the top left-hand corner) to the largely de-contextualized presentationof signature city buildings (both heritage and modern design), whose pictures are
18 M.C. Paganoni
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f C
alif
orni
a, S
an D
iego
] at
19:
57 0
3 A
pril
2013
taken at unexpected angles, arranged in fragments, or as a collage. Visual canonsespouse the stereotypical gaze of globalized ‘image banks’ (Machin, 2004), optingfor ‘low modality’ images that move away from naturalistic forms of representationtowards more schematic and idealized ones (Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996). In thisway, the cultural specificity of city icons and landmarks is homogenized accordingto the conventions of a cosmopolitan and global iconicity that deterritorializes local-ities while promoting ‘urban imageability’: that is, ‘the ease with which parts of acity make a strong mental impression to people’ (Hospers, 2009, p. 227). Repack-aging a city’s identity in the direction of cosmopolitan homologation implies theadoption of a visual aesthetics that, as Degen (2008) remarks (while discussing theconnection between websites and urban regeneration), is not only intellectual butalso highly sensory, and sensuous, in its material remapping of public spaces. Inother words, ‘the aim is to attract an increasing mobile public, and making this pub-lic stay and consume as much as possible through a pleasant and captivating envi-ronment’ (Degen, 2008, p. 29).
Despite the observable visual conformity of local government websites, citybrands are nevertheless constructed with varying degrees of creativity. This variableis not related to the actual size of the city (the Bradford website has a less-imaginative overall design than the Cardiff one, though Bradford has a larger popu-lation), but is linked to the social and cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1986) a given cityis able to draw upon, build, circulate and incorporate into its brand. This leads usto the conclusion that what is especially crucial in the creation of an appealing web-site design is whether the city has been liable to culture-led regeneration, a preciouslocal intangible (sometimes supported by EU funding) that can be exploited inbrand construction and communication (Vickery, 2007). Thanks to web mediationand the expertise of skilled professionals, local creativity becomes, or may become,a global asset, adding value to the city brand.
Twelve Municipal Websites of British Cities
It is widely accepted that ‘the first items that are associated with a website are itsaddress and its domain name’ (Florek et al., 2006, p. 285) and all 12 of the web-sites surveyed here share the same internet address: the city name followed by acommon top-name domain (gov.uk) which establishes them as a distinguishablegenre set apart from other external promotional city websites (such as tourism, realestate, services) and signals their commitment to the criteria of digital inclusionadvanced by the Directgov framework. The ‘gov.uk’ domain may thus be seen tobe tailored by the common objective of the central government and local adminis-trations to harmonize a network of e-services and make them accessible to all citi-zens. This uniformity seems to mitigate, to some extent at least, the antagonismimplicit in the construction of branded images that sees cities rivalling with eachother to offset decline, boost urban regeneration and acquire competitive advantage(Flowerdew, 2004). Due to the homogenization of communicative practices broughtabout by new media, another powerful agent of globalization, these websites shareconverging representational grammars and functions, with easily recognizable semi-otic features, and an offer of a common inventory of interactive online servicesaccessible round the clock.
‘Assuming that each activity on the website contributes to place branding, whichresults in a certain image of the place’ (Florek et al., 2006, p. 283), it is the home-
City Branding and Social Inclusion 19
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f C
alif
orni
a, S
an D
iego
] at
19:
57 0
3 A
pril
2013
page of each council website that has received greater analytic attention for its guid-ing function into the online environment. The first visual element of page designthat captures attention is the horizontal frame of the masthead, delimiting the top ofthe homepage. According to the principles of semiotic analysis, this upper sectionof a page tends to be symbolically invested with the representation of an idealworld (Floch, 1995), which, in this case, means redressing poor perceptions of thecity in question and projecting an inspirational urban identity by providing positivevisual and verbal evidence. The masthead is identifiable by a colour scheme thatacts as a consistent cohesive device on the entire site and usually carries the citylogo, which may occur in several inter-semiotic combinations of modes (Koller,2008, p. 439), depending on the deployment of semiotic resources.
The empirical evidence of the dataset under consideration here shows that thelogo design may range from very basic associations of typography and colourwithout additional pictorial elements (as in the case of the Greater London Author-ity and Bradford) to landmark logos (Sheffield), heraldic logos (in the case of Bel-fast, Bristol, Cardiff, Leeds and Manchester), abstract pictorial logos(Birmingham’s stylized heart) or, alternatively, spurious solutions that hybridize theformer typologies: the name of Edinburgh in crimson and black demarcated bytwo square-shaped crimson dots, the traditional crest of Glasgow inside a greenand yellow rectangle, and Liverpool’s modernized iconic cormorant ‘to make itclearer to residents, partners and visitors who we are and what we provide’(Down, 2009).
Only three textual ‘brand claims’ are retrievable in the investigated selection:1. Birmingham, ‘Global city, local heart’; 2. Sheffield, ‘Where everyone matters’;3. Cardiff, ‘Proud capital’, in line with the comparable low occurrence of seven outof a corpus of 52 UK cities and towns, reported by Koller (2008, p. 439). A possi-ble explanation for this omission could be that, in their communicative practices,municipal websites are willing to tone down the most obvious marketing strategiesthat are exploited by public-private partnerships, such as the Destination EdinburghMarketing Alliance (DEMA) which has launched Edinburgh as ‘Inspiring Capital’,or the Leeds Marketing Initiative (‘Leeds, Live It, Love it’).
Unlike product branding, city branding is, inevitably, forcefully brought back toa geographical reality and a local politics of place, whose influence on the lives ofits citizens remains tangible. As illustrated above in the case of visuals, trademarkimages of the city have to stay anchored to the geographical context by reason oftheir necessary recognizability. However, the video galleries or webcams embeddedon websites often replicate the same kind of apparently detached, but in fact canni-balistic gaze of ‘place consumers’ (Urry, 1995), this time not just visitors, but alsoinvestors and affluent residents. Such as, for example, on the Leeds and Glasgowwebsites: two shrinking industrial cities that have undergone major rebranding,restructuring urban space mentally and physically in the direction of a visually aes-theticized sense of place (Degen, 2008).
A substantial generic homogeneity is also noticeable in the comparable offer ofinformation about characteristic topics of public-sector services. The strategy ofcontent presentation, based on realistic expectations, needs and requests (‘Pay forit’/‘Apply for it’/‘Report it’/‘Make a complaint’), has been shown to be more user-friendly and fluid than a semantic grid centred on a given identity (for example,information for young people, the disabled, the elderly, the unemployed) (Gnoliet al., 2006), as this latter kind of design risks framing users within preconceived
20 M.C. Paganoni
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f C
alif
orni
a, S
an D
iego
] at
19:
57 0
3 A
pril
2013
categories and stereotypes. By its very nature, a city council website is concernedwith addressing a very diverse community, characterized by multiple stakeholderswith manifold interests – local residents, service providers, employers, health andeducation authorities, business investors, community organizations, tourists andbusiness visitors (Trueman et al., 2004, p. 321) – and is involved in a dynamic flowof practices which e-services attempt to interpret.
From online applications to tax payments, access to e-services is usuallygiven salience by means of layout, colour and font and is reinforced by amarked use of the interpersonal function of language. This means that, in theonline conversation with users, discourse is frequently articulated by means oflinguistic formulations oriented towards the addressees. They include conativestructures in the imperative mood (‘Do it online. Contact. Report. Apply. Pay.Inquire. Have Your Say’/‘Get involved in local democracy’, Leeds City Councilwebsite), interrogative structures (‘Want to get more involved in local places,services, and decisions that affect you?’, Leeds City Council website), as wellas frequent recourse to the pronoun you and the possessive your (‘Online youcan’/‘Find local websites on Your Edinburgh’, City of Edinburgh Council web-site; ‘Log on to learn about your area’, Glasgow City Council website). Some-what contradictorily, this insistent appeal to citizens is counterbalanced by theequally frequent use of exclusive first-person deixis (we, our) to position localadministrators as empowered actors making decisions on behalf of communitymembers, but ultimately independent of them: a linguistic strategy which, infact, would seem to mirror in discourse the well-known top-down managerialapproach to policy-making.
Spending over £ 1 billion a year we provide a range of services for the512,000 people of Sheffield. You can find these in both our special printedand online A-Z Guides. (Sheffield City Council website, emphasis added)
The perceivable tension between ‘public’ and ‘expert’ language is also apparentin the adoption of the generic repertoire borrowed from corporate communica-tion, retrievable on city websites in the form of mission statements, communitystrategies and visions, action and business plans, corporate governance publica-tions, financial reports, press releases and promotional tourism texts, where thediscourses of governance and branding are constantly intermingled. For exam-ple:
It contains actions that are designed to improve the balance between the needsof residents and tourists with those of biodiversity. This will help to make ourcity a more enjoyable and healthier place to work in and to visit, and willcontribute to a greater quality of life for us all. (Local Biodiversity ActionPlan for Belfast)
As previously discussed with reference to the obfuscating power of the phrase‘social inclusion’, in hybridized public discourse of this kind ‘certain words becomeunspeakable whereas others are repeated endlessly’ (McGuigan, 2010,p. 121). With their profusion of evaluative lexis, the quotations cited belowexemplify this generic and ideological ambiguity (emphasis added).
City Branding and Social Inclusion 21
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f C
alif
orni
a, S
an D
iego
] at
19:
57 0
3 A
pril
2013
Belfast is a city with a rich heritage, offering a host of vibrant culturaland artistic experiences. We recognise that culture makes a very valuablecontribution to the life of our city and are working hard to place cultureand arts firmly on the urban regeneration agenda for Belfast. Culturallife makes an important contribution to the economy, offering employ-ment opportunities and developing valuable skills. It also encourages theever growing numbers of tourists to visit. (Belfast Belfast City Councilwebsite)
The City Park will create a vibrant space in the heart of Bradford city centre.It will be a meeting place, an events space and a stimulus to the economy –bringing more people to Bradford to live and work. (Bradford City Councilwebsite)
We want Glasgow to flourish as a modern, multi-cultural metropolitan city ofopportunity, achievement, culture and sporting excellence where citizens andbusinesses thrive and visitors are always welcomed. (Glasgow City Councilwebsite)
Liverpool has a vibrant, welcoming city centre that has much to offer theseven million visitors who come each year. (Liverpool City Councilwebsite)
In the context of these somewhat old-fashioned marketing devices, access tosocial networks such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter directly from councilwebsites may be seen as means of distinguishing between inward-looking, citi-zen-oriented affordances (Directgov, Plain English Campaign, Services for theDisabled) and outward-looking ones (from translation services to the announce-ment of major cultural and sports events). In general, since it is hoped thatthey may attract considerable investment, greater emphasis is given to interna-tional sporting events (for example, Glasgow’s 2014 Commonwealth Games)over cultural ones. On this point, it should also be noted that other city-relatedwebsites (Glasgow’s annual music festival, ‘Celtic Connections’) are rarelyadvertised on the homepage despite the fact that it is extremely important forgood information architecture to purposefully link external sites and coordinatecontent. Local news is usually hosted in a dedicated section (‘What’s on?’)but, as illustrated in the quotation below, is framed within the world scenario,especially in the case of a global threat such as swine flu, or epochal issuessuch as the environment, sustainability and climate change (also on the EUagenda).
Manchester People OnlineManchester People is the Council’s flagship newspaper delivered every threemonths to households across the city. It carries news about council servicesand partnerships to keep residents informed. And every edition is publishedon the council’s website so that people all around the world can keep up todate with news from our city (Manchester City Council website, emphasisadded).
22 M.C. Paganoni
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f C
alif
orni
a, S
an D
iego
] at
19:
57 0
3 A
pril
2013
A final parameter of good e-governance is a conspicuous commitment not onlyto customer satisfaction (measured by questionnaires, polls, or website satisfactionsurveys which often open up while linking to the city website), but also citizens’feedback, comments and complaints in local blogs and forums. In actual fact, theextent to which city websites facilitate an ongoing conversation with citizens is,ultimately, a political variable that depends on individual councils’ communicationstrategies. The overall perception, though, is that in most cases citizens’ feedbackdoes not go much beyond very basic contact or is made public only in so far as itis positive. Similarly, public consultations – an opportunity for citizens ‘to havetheir say’– tend to be disciplined into rigidly structured online forms. The followingselection of ‘comments’ from Manchester residents, posted on the dedicated sectionof the City Council site ‘Why I love where I live. Resident’s Quotes,’ is a goodexample of the not infrequent trivialization of citizens’ voices and the shrinking ofa meaningful public sphere:
Manchester residents say why they love where they live
‘We’ve got lovely Blackley Forest, the glorious river Irk and stunning HeatonPark, what more would you want?’
Dot Keller – Higher Blackley
‘I like my neighbourhood, because it is friendly, comfortable, multicultural,green, conveniently situated for amenities and travel, and is also a neighbour-hood with a future’.
Pete Stephenson – Cheetham Ward
‘I have lived here for 25 years now and have worked hard to create a betterenvironment where I live. This is a good, respectful neighbourhood and has agreat community spirit’.
Emilio Degisi – Cheetham Ward
‘I love our community spirit here and my housing refurbishments and best ofall, the beautiful views from my flat’.
Stella Hodkinson – Charlestown Ward
‘I love the food and the different communities’.Ibtadah Mahmood – Rusholme Ward
“I love the environment around here, and I’m determined to help protect andimprove it!’
Joan Wilson – Higher Blackley Ward
‘I love the cultural diversity of the area. With events held in the park, speak-ing to others in the area and just seeing what goes on around me I’ve learnt alot about other cultures and feel enriched for it’.
Clare Simpson – Rusholme Ward(Manchester City Council)
City Branding and Social Inclusion 23
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f C
alif
orni
a, S
an D
iego
] at
19:
57 0
3 A
pril
2013
The unanimously positive feedback provided by the interviewees resembles aform of ‘orchestration of consent’ rather than a realistic exchange of views on con-temporary city life on issues ranging from the coexistence of multicultural groupsto a renewed sense of community and belonging. As shown in the findings of the‘Moving Manchester’ research project, which investigated the complex processes of‘home’ and ‘belonging’ for today’s city-dwellers (see Pearce, 2012), these issuescannot be meaningfully summed up by such a list of bland and self-congratulatoryremarks completely lacking in evidence of discursive struggle (Häikiö, 2007), as inthe following extract:
Leeds City Council the second largest Metropolitan District Council inEngland. Serving a population of 727,000. This film shows some of the ser-vices provided to people in the city. They show how the council is achievingits strategic aims which are to make sure that in Leeds: all neighbourhoodsare safe, clean, green and well maintained; all communities are thriving andharmonious places where people are happy to live; our children and youngpeople are healthy, safe and successful; at each stage of life, people are ableto live healthy, fulfilling lives; and Leeds is a highly competitive, internationalcity (description of the Leeds City Council video, uploaded to YouTube byLeeds Initiative, 29 July 2007).
Twitter, the latest newcomer among the social networking media on city web-sites, appears, as yet, to be little involved in the collective re-imagining of place.Although, at first, this seems rather surprising given the fact that the discussionemanates from a particular city, it may well fit into a trend identified by others whohave researched digital storytelling (such as Lynne Pearce’s analysis of the BBC‘Capture Wales’ website [Pearce, 2010]). Indeed, the erasure of specific referencesto space/place in cyberspace (an omission which is arguably more striking on blogsthan on Twitter since the format of the latter tends to facilitate content creation anddissemination rather than conversation) raises several questions on the effectiveaggregating potential of web-mediated communication. This turn of events should,however, be seen in the context of recent debates on the disruptive ‘perceptions ofnarrativity’ (Page, 2010, p. 423), place deixis included, that are emerging thanks todigitization and testify to new ontological formations of self and world. This said,in line with increasingly popular corporate uses of microblogging, Twitter’s publicutility as a vehicle to spread real-time information on public services (transport, tra-vel advice, roadworks, entertainment, libraries, opening hours) and, simultaneously,to advertise big events (such as Birmingham’s participation in the bid for ‘UK Cityof Culture 2013’, or the building of the City Park in Bradford) should not beunderestimated:
Check out all the changes happening in Bradford city centre for the City Parkat www.bradford.gov.uk/citypark and click on webcam. (@City ParkBD)
A discursive strategy that is common to the municipal websites here analyzed istheir positive focus on diverse civic communities as an important asset and theircelebration of multiculturalism as a significant part of the city brand. The promo-tional objective of city branding entails that the brand identity provided on thewebsite should be that of a ‘healthy’, heterogeneous community, where ‘the
24 M.C. Paganoni
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f C
alif
orni
a, S
an D
iego
] at
19:
57 0
3 A
pril
2013
diversity celebrated within contemporary cities is mediated, engineered and pack-aged’ (Latham, 2003, p. 1702). Above all, in order to be legitimated, diversity hasto be ratified by an authoritative body: a good example of this is the images ofyoung buskers published on the London website in August 2009, busking now hav-ing become an ‘acceptable’ practice regulated by the Greater London Authority.When ‘marginalities’ surface (for example, in the representation of different ethnici-ties, such as a black mother with her daughter on the Cardiff website; or in the allu-sion to pressing social problems, such as the offer of advice on how to cope withrecession on the Birmingham and Bristol websites), they are either sanitized bymeans of reassuring pictures11 or adroitly kept at a rhetorical distance through theuse of ‘expert’ language. Remarkable in the following example is the use of thegerund and exclusive first-person deixis (‘backing’, ‘we are pursuing’, ‘we’ve puttogether’) to represent the Birmingham council as a highly dynamic and self-reliantbody in contrast to its ‘most affected’ citizenry who are constructed as helpless andpassive. The latter can only receive assistance and ‘benefit from a recovery’ (busi-nesses, incidentally, coming before individuals in the proposed rescue operations),while nominalization strategies are deployed that weaken agency, and thus responsi-bility, by recourse to abstract nouns (‘recession’, ‘recovery’, ‘the impact of globalrecession’, ‘a wide range of innovative projects’, ‘the economy’, ‘support’), in twocases followed by the passive voice. Ultimately, however, the use of hedging con-structions that mitigate the truth value of these assertions (‘there is little doubt’, ‘thebest possible position’, ‘may feel’, ‘for some time to come’, ‘how best to manage’,‘whether you’re’) ensure that the council does not bear the final responsibility forwhat comes next:
Backing Birmingham: From Recession to RecoveryLike all cities in the UK, there is little doubt that the impact of the globalrecession is being keenly felt in Birmingham by businesses and individualsfrom all walks of life. What sets us apart from other cities is that we arepursuing a wide range of innovative projects which are designed to help thosemost affected to cope and to put the city and its citizens in the best possibleposition to benefit from a recovery. While the economy is now recoveringfrom the recession, many businesses and residents in the city may feel itseffects for some time to come. And that’s why we’ve put together these handyguides to getting help during the recession. Whether you’re a business lookingfor advice on how best to manage your debts or you’re an individuallooking for new employment, support is available. (Birmingham City Council,emphasis added)
In terms of a conspicuous social inclusion agenda, meanwhile, our research hasrevealed that all the British municipal websites take a culturally plural society forgranted. However, their visual emphasis is not on large communities but on singleindividuals or small groups, usually represented as happy and in conventionalpostures (mother and child, women pushing prams, a family playing together out-doors). Similarly, gender roles tend to be stereotypically reproduced, with mostlywomen shown to be in charge of caring (children, the elderly, the sick), while thenew professional female class is largely underrepresented; and the same applies to‘the world of a whole new workforce, increasingly made of immigrant or
City Branding and Social Inclusion 25
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f C
alif
orni
a, S
an D
iego
] at
19:
57 0
3 A
pril
2013
minoritized citizens, who take on the functions once performed by the mother/wifeof the older middle classes’ (Sassen, 2006, p. 2). Indeed, while the council home-pages sometimes target job seekers, migrants are never explicitly addressed. Envi-ronmental issues, from waste disposal and recycling to a commitment to ‘greenerliving’, are largely addressed in relation to everyday needs and services, withoutany explicit political perspective, as is also the case with the opportunities for vol-unteer work sometimes listed on the pages.
Conclusions
Adopted by local administrations to promote a city’s identity, the municipal web-site is now a recognizable communicative genre. It is employed as a tool for webgovernance not simply in terms of accessible and intuitively usable e-services, butalso, ostensibly, to engage its citizens in decision-making and enhance socialinclusion.
Taking the UK as a European benchmark as regards the implementation of ICTin local administrations, the websites of 12 major city councils have been surveyedto identify the most effective strategies through which the visual/verbal narrativesof the city brand can be translated into a socially cohesive discourse able to repre-sent the different communities that comprise a contemporary city.
The retrieved evidence shows that, on the whole, the municipal websites areusable, intuitive and accessible; in this regard they may be seen to effectivelypromote citizen-centric participation at the level of basic e-services and the shar-ing of official data within the guidelines of Open Government initiatives. A clo-ser look at the multimodal construction of the city brand, however, reveals thatthe discourse of social inclusion is frequently subsumed within that of corporaterhetoric and is consequently domesticated to the point of obfuscating the mostcritical aspects of urban life. While the language is often conciliatory, self-con-gratulatory and promotional, the visual repertoire falls back on stock images thatultimately betray the reiteration of a strictly regulated conception of the urbanlandscape in which everyone fits into a particular box and stays there obedi-ently. In this way the city’s social capital is largely deprived of its complexity,thus widening the gap ‘between the identity communicated by local governmentand the actual identity or reality experienced by various communities’ (Truemanet al., 2004, p. 319). In terms of the mobilities paradigm, moreover, this image-repertoire is very perceptibly static and thus undermines the sites’ notionalinclusivity, especially when the contemporary city’s transient communities aretaken into account (tourists, economic migrants, asylum seekers, students and soforth).
The overlap between issues of citizenship and consumerism, and between thepublic and corporate spheres, may also be seen to weaken the sites’ efforts toreconceptualize representation and re-imagine citizenship. This is especially truewith regard to the long history of migration that defines all the cities featured in thisresearch. In every case the complexities of urban life in migrant-based cities aresimplified into a fixed and commodified version of multiculturalism that wouldseem to purposefully subjugate the stories of how the different groups andindividuals got there. On the whole, what is promoted is a gentrified urbanbrand, whose ‘glocal flavour’ and cultural diversity accrue to the city’s ‘vibrant’
26 M.C. Paganoni
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f C
alif
orni
a, S
an D
iego
] at
19:
57 0
3 A
pril
2013
cosmopolitan identity, but which is at odds with a political recognition of existinginequalities and a more material policy of social inclusion.
For all these reasons, beneath the polished design of city council websites it issometimes hard to detect the vital pulse and common hardships of contemporarycity living, as well as the urgency of countless, pressing international issues frommigration and the environment to anti-globalization. These issues find their citi-zenship, instead, in other political spheres, such as non-governmental organiza-tions (NGOs), human rights’ organizations, environmentalist initiatives and anti-globalization movements, all of which have their own independent websites (Sas-sen, 2004, p. 649), not usually featured on the city council homepages (examplesinclude ‘Fairtrade Foundation’, ‘Project Dirt Liverpool’ and ‘Sheffield Is My Pla-net’).
The challenge city branding thus faces is surely to go beyond the rather con-servative objective of modestly ‘serving’ its community and showing a respectableface to the rest of the world and fostering, instead, a dynamic sense of commu-nity based upon a genuine interactive debate that is focused both upon the localand the global. In this regard, the research that has informed this article suggeststhat inclusion of social networking forums on the city websites may, indeed, offera positive way forward by enabling citizens to present their city to the world asan organic, evolving and contested ‘urban imaginary’; what city websites deal in,after all, are public commons, and local governments have a responsibility toensure that the unmediated voices of their citizens determine what makes theircity a special place.
Notes
1. In the supranational geopolitical terrain of Europe, city branding has long found institutionalrecognition, for example with the implementation of the European Capital of Culture scheme(Richards & Wilson, 2004; Aiello & Thurlow, 2006; Griffiths, 2006). The scheme, which beganin 1985 with the title of the European City of Culture with the idea to ‘help to bring the peo-ples of the member states closer together’ (European Commission, 1985), was renamed theEuropean Capital of Culture (ECOC) scheme in 1999 and is now funded within the EU Cultureprogramme (Aiello & Thurlow, 2006). Every year a city is so designated to showcase its cul-tural life and performance. Glasgow was named European City of Culture in 1990, Liverpoolin 2008, while Birmingham, defeated in 2008, participated in the bid for UK City of Culture2013 together with Derry, Norwich, and Sheffield, a bid which was won by Derry in July2010.
2. The phrase ‘urban marginalities’ here defines all forms of social exclusion retraceable in the con-temporary city in Europe, social exclusion which is not alleviated, rather, is often made worse bythe uprooting of traditional communities, the competitiveness of urban life and the weakening ofthe welfare system, especially in the present scenario of global economic downturn. Besides thewell-known categories of underprivileged migrants, segregated ethnic minorities, the unemployed,the disabled and the elderly, a new, less visible but increasingly conspicuous configuration of dis-possessed seems to be emerging in the city, cutting across class, ethnicity and gender: for exam-ple, single parents, youth receiving poor or inadequate schooling, underemployed young adults,and mature workers forced to retrain, or to retire before time.
3. Launched on 30 September 2010 in order to encourage the free use and re-use of public sectorinformation, the UK Open Government Licence is based on the conviction that access toofficial data sets represents a civic right and a public asset in the contemporary knowledgeeconomy.
4. The Demos publication, Logging On: Culture, Participation and the Web (Holden, 2007), is agood example of this national trend towards widespread and inclusive web literacy which wascentral to the New Labour agenda.
City Branding and Social Inclusion 27
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f C
alif
orni
a, S
an D
iego
] at
19:
57 0
3 A
pril
2013
5. Though Vickery (2007) recognizes a degree of credibility in the British city councils that workedin this direction, the expression ‘culture-led regeneration’ is far from being aproblematic, espe-cially when culture becomes a very impoverished notion, covers what is in fact real-estate gentrifi-cation or becomes ‘subject to a national political agenda, emphasizing social and communitywelfare; for example, “housing-led” regeneration has since become a political imperative for alllocal authorities’ (Vickery, 2007, p. 22).
6. As an example of how e-government services reflect a wider national culture and intellectualinvestment, Gnoli et al. (2006) compare the new Directgov website (2004), replacing the previousand less functional UK Online, to the equivalent Italian website (http://www.italia.gov.it),launched in 2002, showing the superiority of the information architecture of the British portal,which is grouped around target audiences and topics, over the hierarchical and one-dimensionaltaxonomy of its Italian counterpart.
7. Doubtless, the August 2011 London riots and David Cameron’s criticism of social networkingsites as fuelling disorder add complexity to the potential uses of the web, since during the riotssocial media were both employed to orchestrate civil unrest and rally volunteers in the followingclean-up operations.
8. From the City Mayors website: ‘Established in 2003, City Mayors encourages city leadersfrom across the world to develop innovative and sustainable solutions to long-standing urbanproblems such as housing, transport, education and employment. City Mayors also debatesways to meet the latest environmental, technological, social and security challenges, whichaffect the well-being of citizens’ (‘About Us’, http://www.citymayors.com/gratis/city_mayors.html).
9. ‘With a population of more than seven million people, London, the UK’s capital, has no equalamong its UK peers and is followed by Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow and Sheffield. There areonly three more British cities with a population of more than 500,000’ (http://www.citymayors.com/gratis/uk_topcities.html). (N.B. These figures refer only to the city centres; the GreaterManchester conurbation has a population of 2.6 million).
10. An additional Greater London Authority (GLA) initiative concerns the creation of the officialLondon Data Store account on Twitter which releases ‘all of the Greater London Authority’s datafor all Londoners to see and use free of charge’ (http://data.london.gov.uk).
11. ‘BEAT THE RECESSION’ (below a picture of a street sign showing Recovery Road). BristolCity Council is committed to helping the city manage in the current economic climate. Thesepages offer you advice, tips and ideas for beating the recession and managing your finances (Bris-tol City Council).
References
Aiello, G. & Thurlow, C. (2006) Symbolic capitals: Visual discourse and intercultural exchange in theEuropean Capital of Culture scheme, Language and Intercultural Communication, 6(2), pp.148–162.
Anholt, S. (2006) Competitive Identity: The New Brand Management for Nations, Cities and Regions(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).
Anholt, S. (2008) Place branding: Is it marketing, or isn’t it?, Place Branding and Public Diplomacy,4(10), pp. 1–6.
Appadurai, A. (1996) Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis: Univer-sity of Minnesota).
Arvidsson, A. (2006) Brands: Meaning and Value in Media Culture (London and New York: Routl-edge).
Bauman, Z. (1998) Globalization? (Cambridge: Polity Press).Beck, U. (2000) What is Globalization?, trans. Patrick Camiller (Cambridge: Polity Press).Bourdieu, P. (1986) [1979] Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. R. Nice
(London: Routledge).Cairncross, F. (1997) The Death of Distance: How the Communications Revolution Will Change Our
Lives (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press).Castells, M. (2000) The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, updated ed. (Oxford: Blackwell).Cohen-Blankshtain, C., Nijkamp, P. & van Montfort, K. (2004) Modelling ICT perceptions and views
of urban front-liners, Urban Studies, 41(13), pp. 2647–2667.
28 M.C. Paganoni
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f C
alif
orni
a, S
an D
iego
] at
19:
57 0
3 A
pril
2013
Coleman, S. (2005) New mediation and direct representation: Reconceptualizing representation in thedigital age, New Media & Society, 7(2), pp. 177–198.
Craven, P. & Wellman, B. (1973) The network city, Sociological Inquiry, 43, pp. 57–88.Degen, M.M. (2008) Sensing Cities: Regenerating Public Life in Barcelona and Manchester (London
and New York: Routledge).De Michelis, L. (2008) BritainTM and ‘corporate’ national identity, in: R. Wodak & V. Koller (Eds)
Handbook of Communication in the Public Sphere, Handbook of Applied Linguistics 4, pp. 203–222 (Berlin: de Gruyter).
Down, R. (2009) Liverpool City Council unveils new look Liver Bird logo, Liverpool Echo, October26. Available at http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/liverpool-news/local-news/2009/10/26/liverpool-city-council-unveils-new-look-liver-bird-logo-100252-25012338/ (accessed 5 November 2011).
European Commission (1985) Resolution of the Ministers Responsible for Cultural Affairs Concerning theAnnual Event ‘European City of Culture’, Doc. 7081/84, June 4 (Brussels: European Commission).
Fairclough, N. (2006) Language and Gobalization (London and New York: Routledge).Floch, J.-M. (1995) [2002] Identità visive. Costruire l’identità a partire dai segni (Milan: FrancoAngeli).Florek, M., Insch, A. & Gnoth, J. (2006) City council websites as a means of place brand identity com-
munication, Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, 2(4), pp. 276–296.Flowerdew, J. (2004) The discursive construction of a world-class city, Discourse & Society, 15(5), pp.
579–605.Gnoli, C., Marino, V. & Rosati, L. (2006) Organizzare la conoscenza. Dalle biblioteche all’archittetura
dell’informazione per il Web (Milan: Tecniche Nuove).Goffmann, E. (1981) Forms of Talk (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press).Griffiths, R. (2006) City/culture discourses: Evidence from the competition to select the European Capi-
tal of Culture 2008, European Planning Studies, 14(4), pp. 415–430.Häikiö, L. (2007) Expertise, representation and the common good: Grounds for legitimacy in the urban
governance network, Urban Studies, 44(11), pp. 2147–2162.Hickman, J. (2010) What next for digital inclusion?, Interactive Cultures. Available at http://interactive-
cultures.org (accessed 13 July 2010).Holden, J. (2007) Logging On: Culture, Participation and the Web (London: Demos).Hospers, G.-J. (2009) Lynch, Urry and city marketing: Taking advantage of the city as a built and gra-
phic image, Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, 5(3), pp. 226–233.Jones, R.H. (2008) Technology, democracy and participation in space, in: R. Wodak & V. Koller (Eds)
Handbook of Communication in the Public Sphere, Handbook of Applied Linguistics 4, pp. 429–446 (Berlin: de Gruyter).
Koller, V. (2008) ‘The world in one city’: semiotic and cognitive aspects of city branding. Journal ofLanguage and Politics, 7(3), 431–450.
Kress, G. (2003) Literacy in the New Media Age (London and New York: Routledge).Kress, G. & van Leeuwen, Th. (1996) Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design (Abingdon and
New York: Routledge).Kress, G. & van Leeuwen, Th. (2001) Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary
Communication (London: Arnold).Lash, S. & Urry, J. (1994) Economies of Signs and Space (London: Sage).Latham, A. (2003) Urbanity, lifestyle and making sense of the new urban cultural economy: Notes from
Auckland, New Zealand, Urban Studies, 40(9), pp. 1699–1724.Levitas, R. (2005) The Inclusive Society? Social Exclusion and New Labour (Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan).Machin, D. (2004) Building the world’s visual language: The increasing global importance of image
banks in corporate media, Visual Communication, 3(3), pp. 316–336.Massey, D. (2007) World City (Cambridge: Polity Press).McGuigan, J. (2010) Cultural Analysis (London: Sage).Olins, W. (2003) On Brand (London: Thames and Hudson).Paganoni, M.C. (2007) Polite subversion in e-democracy, Culture, 20, pp. 301–315.Page, R. (2010) Re-examining narrativity: Small stories in status updates, Text & Talk, 30(4), pp. 423–
444.Pearce, L. (2010) ‘Writing’ and ‘region’ in the 21st century: Epistemological reflections on regionally-
located art and literature in the wake of the digital revolution, European Journal of Cultural Stud-ies, 13(1), pp. 27–41.
Pearce, L. (2012) The urban imaginary: Writing, migration, place, Mobilities, 7(1), pp. 1–11.
City Branding and Social Inclusion 29
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f C
alif
orni
a, S
an D
iego
] at
19:
57 0
3 A
pril
2013
Richards, G. & Wilson, J. (2004) The impact of cultural events on city image: Rotterdam, CulturalCapital of Europe 2001, Urban Studies, 41(10), pp. 1931–1951.
Rosati, L. (2007) Architettura dell’informazione. Trovabilità: dagli oggetti quotidiani al Web (Milan:Apogeo).
Sassen, S. (2004) Local actors in global politics, Current Sociology, 52(4), pp. 649–670.Sassen, S. (2006) Cities in a World Economy: Third Edition (Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press).Sassen, S. (2007) Deciphering the Global (New York and London: Routledge).Torres, L., Pina, V. & Royo, S. (2005) E-government and the transformation of public administrations
in EU countries: Beyond NPM or just a second wave of reforms?, Online Information Review, 29(5), pp. 531–553.
Trueman, M., Klemm, M. & Giroud, A. (2004) Can a city communicate? Bradford as a corporatebrand, Corporate Communications: An International Journal, 9(4), pp. 317–330.
Trueman, M., Cook, D. & Cornelius, N. (2007) Creative dimensions for branding and regeneration:Overcoming negative perceptions of a city, Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, 4(1), pp.29–44.
Urry, J. (1995) Consuming Places (London and New York: Routledge).Urry, J. (2007) Mobilities (Cambridge and Malden, MA: Polity Press).van Leeuwen, Th. (2005) Introducing Social Semiotics (London: Routledge).van Leeuwen, Th. & Jewitt, C. (2001) A Handbook of Visual Analysis (London: Sage).Vickery, J. (2007) The Emergence of Culture-led Regeneration: A Policy Concept and Its Discontents,
Research Papers no. 9, Series Editors: O. Bennett & J. Ahearne (Coventry: Centre for CulturalPolicy Studies, University of Warwick).
Young, C., Diep, M. & Drabble, S. (2006) Living with difference? The ‘cosmopolitan city’ and urbanreimaging in Manchester, UK, Urban Studies, 43(10), pp. 1687–1714.
Appendix: List of Websites
City councilsBelfast, http://www.belfastcity.gov.ukBirmingham, http://www.birmingham.gov.ukBradford, http://www.bradford.gov.ukBristol, http://www.bristol.gov.uk/ccm/portalCardiff, http://www.cardiff.gov.ukEdinburgh, http://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/internetGlasgow, http://www.glasgow.gov.ukLeeds, http://www.leeds.gov.ukLiverpool, http://www.liverpool.gov.ukLondon, http://www.london.gov.ukManchester, http://www.manchester.gov.ukSheffield, http://www.sheffield.gov.uk
OtherCity Mayors, http://www.citymayors.comCommunications Consumer Panel, http://www.communicationsconsumerpanel.org.ukDigital Inclusion Taskforce, http://raceonline2012.orgDirectgov, http://www.direct.gov.ukFairtrade Foundation, http://www.fairtrade.org.ukGlobalization and World Cities Research Network (GaWC), http://www.lboro.ac.uk/gawcInteractive Cultures, http://interactivecultures.org
30 M.C. Paganoni
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f C
alif
orni
a, S
an D
iego
] at
19:
57 0
3 A
pril
2013
Italian Citizen Portal, http://www.italia.gov.itLeeds Initiative, http://www.leedsinitiative.orgLondon Data Store, http://data.london.gov.ukProject Dirt Liverpool, http://www.projectdirtliverpool.comSheffield Is My Planet, http://sheffieldismyplanet.co.uk
City Branding and Social Inclusion 31
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f C
alif
orni
a, S
an D
iego
] at
19:
57 0
3 A
pril
2013