Understanding Community Sense of Place and Social Sustainability Through Instagram : The establishment of Rågsved nature reserve and the demolition of Snösätra Graffiti Wall of Fame

Sammanfattning: Blomquist, Aviva (2021). Understanding Community Sense of Place and Social Sustainability Through Instagram: The establishment of Rågsved nature reserve and the demolition Snösätra Graffiti Wall of Fame. Human Geography, advanced level, master’s thesis for Master exam in Human Geography, 30 ECTS credits  Supervisor: Danielle Drozdzewski Language: English Key words: Digital geography, sense of place, social media, public space socio-spatial planning, participation, social sustainability, cultural sustainability.  This thesis investigates digital sense of place and social and cultural sustainability issues in the establishment of Rågsved nature reserve and the subsequent demolishment of (parts of) Snösätra Graffiti Wall of Fame. Drawing on theories of the more or less digital world, the non-representational, the more-than human, and the idea of geolocative social media as participatory public space (in the making), the thesis aim was to investigate how covert netnography/digital ethnography and discourse analysis can help us understand sense of place, and to identify sustainability issues through geotagged user generated data on Instagram. The empirical findings reveal conflicting community sense of place, assembled through complex entanglements between algorithms, physical structures/landscape, language, and sensory embodiments, which were simultaneously digital and non-digital. There were indications that the flows of posts geotagged on Instagram functioned as ‘claimed’ participatory public space, where stakeholder communities discussed place outside of dominant political imaginations. In addition, the posts indicated social and cultural sustainability issues. The main conclusion is that this type of discourse analysis of social media has the potential for functioning as a ‘passive’ participation strategy, and for creating deliberative discussions with stakeholder communities based on an understanding of place as they experience it.