Hashtagging Amsterdam : the impact of mediatized city branding on sense of place

Hashtagging Amsterdam

The Impact of Mediatized City Branding on Sense of Place

Master Thesis University of Amsterdam Mavra Bari Supervisor: John Boy

11236299 Second reader: Christian Bröer Masters Social Sciences Amsterdam, August 15, 2017

Table of Contents

1. Abstract 3

2. Introduction 4

3. Theoretical Framework

3.1. City Branding and ‘Social’ Mediatization 10

3.2. City Branding and Sense of Place 14

3.3. Meaning-making: Understanding and 19

Contributing to Sense of Place

4. Research Methods and Questions 23

5. Research Context: ‘I Amsterdam Campaign’ 27

6. Findings and Analysis 28

6.1. Words That Denote Meaning and Sense of Place 34

6. 2. How City Marketers Assign Meaning and Sense of Place 39

6.2.1. Tourists and the ‘I Amsterdam’ Brand 42

6.2.2. Residents and ‘I Amsterdam’ Brand 44

6.3. Tourists Meanings and Sense of Place 47

6.3.1.Unintended Consequences of City Branding: Overcrowding

6.4. Residents Meanings and Sense of Place 49

6.5. ‘I Amsterdam’ Sculpture as Performative 57

Stage for Online and Offline Audience

6.7. Ambivalence: Connecting Meaning and Sense of Place 66

7. Conclusion and Discussion 69

1. Abstract

Like corporations, neoliberal cities invest considerable resources in place branding by developing ‘sense of place’ for tourists and residents. The ‘I Amsterdam’ branding campaign is an example of a highly ‘social’ mediatized campaign owing large part of its success to the namesake sculpture at Museumplein that is the city’s most identifiable landmark. As this pa-per is concerned with how social media impacts sense of place and creates online urban space, I refer to mediatization as social mediatization. I differentiate between the two as the ways in which social media dominants narrative, space, institutions and experiences is different than traditional media.This paper explores the impact the mediatization of a city brand symbol has on the sense of place at and around the sculpture, as well as analyzing the varying meaning making processes that take place for social actors due to the presence of the sculpture. Inter-views from city marketers, tourists and residents and a corpus of 400 Instagram post have been analyzed to understand differential meanings and sense of place. Comparisons between tourists and residents are drawn to explore how mediated city branding impacts sense of place and whether it leads to inauthenticity and placelessness. This paper also examines how ‘sense of place’ is developed by city marketers and is viewed, contributed to and even inverted by visitors and residents. While there are contradictions and latent conflicts between the mean-ings and sense of place of residents and tourists at the site, there is also ambivalence towards the sculpture despite city marketers pushing for a univocal and unambiguous narrative for the Amsterdam brand. The multiple and shifting meanings given to place are also shaped by the various aesthetic and performative aspects at the Museumplein.

2. Introduction

Fig. 1 Museumplein with Rijksmuseum and I Amsterdam sculpture view

One of the major impacts of neoliberalism and globalization has been a push on cities to become more competitive to attract global capital in the form of the creative class, business, investment and tourism (Peck et al 2002, 2012). As demand for urban living and visiting also rises, individuals and resources move more freely through global channels especially leverag-ing the world-wide connection offered by the internet, a global sense of place pervades most 1 urban hubs. Cities are increasingly behaving like corporations as they invest massive re-sources in marketing and branding to set themselves apart from other cities to attract global capital. Though it is problematic that city branding techniques and manuals mimic corporate marketing manifestos, unlike corporations and commodities though, cities develop a strong

Referring to Doreen Massey’s seminal work, ‘Global Sense of Place’ (1991) that discusses 1

the compression of time and space within an increasingly globalised world. She also explores differential geographies of individuals given varied global capital and mobility. Her work is relevant in this paper as it deals with how global impact is imprinted on local places to bring a truly global sense of place.

and identifiable brand by developing a ‘sense of place’ for tourists and residents and this is 2 one of the ways a branding campaign becomes successful (Karavatis at al 2012, 2013, 2015 ).

Some cities are globally identified by a ‘sense of place’ or brand they deem unfit for the global and competitive market such as Amsterdam which since the 70’s gained reputation as the world’s ‘drug and sex capital of the world’ where alternative culture and movements thrived, such as Squatter’s Movement and Provo (Hussey at al 2013). In the more recent decades the city of Amsterdam has attempted to re-brand itself as cosmopolitan, innovative and a hub for commerce and culture by shifting the dominant marketing push away from cof-feeshops and the Red Light District to business opportunities and regeneration. The ‘I Ams-terdam’ campaign is a successful example of city re-branding and marketing campaign and much of the success of the campaign is owed to its namesake sculpture at Museumplein that is the city’s most photographed landmark and is shared by tourists and marketers on social me-dia (Eye for Travel 2014). Thus, the ‘I Amsterdam’ sculpture is not only an example of a suc-cessful city branding symbol but also that of a highly mediatized city brand symbol as well as its main function is that of photo opportunity to be shared on social media. Stig Hjarvard has deemed mediatization to be “a double-sided process of high modernity in which the media on the one hand emerge as an independent institution with a logic of its own that other social in-stitutions have to accommodate to” (2008:105); and mediatization has pervaded neoliberal cities as the hubs of politics, culture and capital they must have media friendly and progres-sive branding. I aim to explore the extent to which neoliberal agenda and mediatized city branding impose dominant narratives around Museumplein and how different social actors conform or counter top-down meanings and sense of place put in place by city marketers.

My research question is, how does the mediatized place branding of the ‘I Amsterdam’ sculpture impact the sense of place for tourists and residents at the Museumplein? The hy-pothesis is that mediatization of the ‘I Amsterdam’ sculpture gives a sense of place that is

In this paper, sense of place is used interchangeably with place attachment. Both terms have 2

been defined by how individuals and communities come to know the places around them through affective, cognitive and behavioural processes such as love, pride, devotion; memory and meaning; and recreation and proximity maintenance, respectively (Scannell & Gifford, ). Other sociologists, environmental psychologists, tourism management and geographer schol-ars that have conflated the two terms include: Cross 2001; Ram et al 2016; Hashemnezhad et al 2013; Bendiner-Viani 2013; Kavaratzis et al 2015; Manzo 2005; Nanzer 2004; Shamai et al 2005 and Ujang 2012.

placeless to tourists and residents as due to globalization and rapid technological progress 3 individual experiences and social dynamics are mediated by interfaces of communication technology rather than direct interaction (Meyrowitz 1985; Giddens 1991; Hay 1998). Gustafson claims that “modernity and internalization produce `placelessness', lacking sense of place and inauthentic physical environments… people relate to places - mobility/cosmopoli-tanism or immobility/localism” (2001: 5). This paper explores whether or not individuals per-ceive the Museumplein as an inauthentic place or with placelessness due to the sculpture’s mediatization by analyzing the various meanings given by tourists and residents to the ‘I Am-sterdam sculpture’ (Grayson et al 2004, Hepp et al 2015). The meaning making process is im-perative to understand how sense of place is perceived and contributed toward by individuals. I predominantly analyze sense of place and placelessness through the lens of meaning making as meanings colour sense of place and help understand how individuals perceive place and themselves in it. I analyze 37 interviews and 400 Instagram posts at and around the sculpture to decipher categories of meaning and then relate how these meanings manifest themselves through place-making.

Understanding city branding and marketing is crucial as city’s use corporate techniques and manifestos which lead to the exclusion of certain groups over others, even if the brand aims to be inclusive. This is increasingly complex and problematic for a city like Amsterdam, where one of its most distinguishable landmarks - the ‘I Amsterdam’ sculpture at Muse-umplein -- is a symbol and product of city branding rather than of history or architecture un-like most other cities.

Placeless derives from Edward Relph’s conception of placelessness. This paper uses Relph’s 3

understanding on placelesness and authenticity mostly but also borrows from Marc Auge’s conception of non-places and Joshua Meyrowitz’s analysis within a media and dramaturgical lens on mass communication’s impact on sense of place.

3. Theoretical Framework

3.1. The Spectacle of City Branding and ‘Social’ Mediatization

Guy Debord, the founder of the counter movement Situationists International, has been deemed a soothsayer of sorts as his critique on mass media and commodification of society has come to be known as shockingly accurate in today’s media and image saturated society. In his exposition on mass media and commodification, ‘The Society of The Spectacle’, he deemed mass media the ‘spectacle’ and writing about the mechanics and pervasiveness of mass media he anticipated how social media and marketing would permeate individual and institutional consciousness, experience and mechanisms (The Guardian 2009, 2012). Though mobile phone technology, the internet and social media have changed the spectacle and the way individuals interact and engage with the world; it is apparent that mass media always had a transformative impact on society that some like Debord saw as a degradation of not only society but the human condition as well (1967). Debord’s emphatic critique on the pivotal role played by representations in society as “the real world becomes real images, mere images are transformed into real beings…to cause a world that is no longer directly perceptible to be seen via different specialised mediations” echo online and offline realities today (Thesis: 18:7). Within advanced capitalism, he lamented the changing dynamics of lived experience and me-diated representation as he saw mass media dulling human senses and perception to such a extent that even human suffering, ennui and counter culture is profitable to those controlling modes of production. However, in today’s modern times even Debord did not anticipate that individuals may start actively labouring to be part of the system of image creation as we see through social media. Rather than being passive consumers of the spectacle, individuals have become active producers of the spectacle though they are still operating within the mecha-nisms of the spectacle and thus, the agency of being a co-producer is debatable. This is encap-sulated in the concept of prosumption involves individuals in capitalism as not only con-sumers but also as producers of capital and culture. While prosumerism is not a new phe-nomenon it has gained considerable traction to generate capital and knowledge for corpora-tions and cities alike. This shift can be most vividly attributed to “a series of recent social changes, especially those associated with the internet and Web 2.0 (briefly, the user-generated

web, e.g. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter), have given it even greater centrality” (Ritzer et al 2010:4). While the proliferation of social media and rapid developments in phone technology have led to massive amounts of user generated content on the internet and individuals are able to exercise some creativity and agency in what they produce, conformity is the norm not the exception. Images, blogs and geotags of cities from all around the world have developed an urban online space that users can not only contribute in developing but also expectations and perceptions of places are deeply coloured by this online urban space. Thus, now the spectacle of media not only impacts perception and buying practices but also spatial reality and how we come to know places. Social media acts as “a membrane over the surface of the city as it se-lects out certain parts of the urban landscape – the glamorous, the hip, the refined – and pass-es them through to users” (Boy et al 2015: 2); this of course leads to qupass-estions of exclusionary online urban space as the spectacle discerns and shows the most profitable parts of places and experiences.

Media scholars argue that the media shapes and frames the form, processes and dis-course in society and imposes a dominant structure and narrative (Lilleker 2008) on individu-als and social institutions as well, which is known as mediatization. However, as this paper is only concerned with how social media impacts sense of place and creates online urban space, I refer to mediatization as social mediatization herewith. I also argue the need in research to differentiate between mediatization and social mediatization as though similar, the ways in which social media dominants narrative, space, institutions and experiences is markedly dif-ferent than traditional media especially as individuals are prosumers. An example of this can be seen in the rise of citizen journalism and the interface time given to Twitter and other so-cial media channels on major news channels.

Similarly, Neoliberal cities also leverage social media’s form and narrative. Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, etc profoundly impact how space is conceived by city marketeres and per-ceived and reproduced by tourists and residents. The ‘I Amsterdam’ campaign and sculpture along with the ubiquity of ‘hashtag’ culture in urban spaces, online and offline, is testament to the large role mediatization plays in the imaginations and realities of city marketers and indi-viduals.

Fig. 2. Nice, France Promenade (Observation photo)

Though the mediatization of city branding is prevalent all over the world, the unprece-dented success and pioneering status of the ‘I Amsterdam’ campaign and sculpture make it a unique case study especially to understand the mirco-intricacies at work that may not be visi-ble in the urban online space of social media. Hankinson argues that place branding by and large derives from product-based branding theory and cities are packaged and understood by people as commodities (2001, 2004, 2007). However, not only are cities seen as brands within neoliberal markets but so are individuals who often express their personal brand through so-cial media as cosmopolitan inhabitants of the world with global capital. Thus soso-cial mediati-zation of space and cities forges a bridge between city branding and personal branding for in-dividuals in the creation of online urban space. The “process is the same as that followed in the formation of images of other entities like products or corporations, which have long been managed as brands” (Ashworth 2009: 521) and so the image becomes the nexus of city brand-ing and individual brandbrand-ing in the production of online urban space. Urban space and market-ing is imagined more for the aesthetics and logistics of a ‘selfie’ at a tourist destination rather

than the preservation of a site’s natural beauty as is illustrated in figure 2 where a ‘hashtag’ branding campaign such as the ‘I Amsterdam’ is set at the Nice promenade.

My research aims to understand the intersection of the social mediatization of city branding with that of people’s meaning-making and behaviour for furthering their own per-sonal brand at such sites. Furthermore, taking a step back from these stages of branding, I try to explore how successful really are social mediatized place brands in developing a sense of place for individuals involved. Particularly, focusing on the discrepancies between meaning-making and sense of place for tourists and residents.

3.2. Hashtagging Amsterdam: Mediatized City Branding, Sense of Place and Place-lessness

Doreen Massey famously posited, “places are processes”, that is to say that places are dynamic and ever-changing (1991), this paper aims to analyze the processes at work for giv-ing the ‘I Amsterdam’ sculpture its sense of place to various individuals. In environmental psychology, Massey’s conception of ‘sense of place’ or how individuals come to understand and forge bonds with places is not only an affective, cognitive or behavioural process. It is in fact all of those processes but also linked with a global sensibility of understanding local con-texts, such as seen around the ‘I Amsterdam’ sculpture, where individuals (tourists in particu-lar) understand the sign as a symbol of being in Amsterdam but also signal their cosmopoli-tanism and global capital. Residents also perceive the sculpture as not just a landmark of Am-sterdam but also a symbol of the city’s brand. Though much has been researched and discov-ered about how individuals come to know their everyday and important places, research on how sense of place is developed within the out-of-ordinary or extraordinary places such as tourist attractions is still sparse. The researchers that have tried to find out the relationship be-tween sense of place and tourism (Ram et al 2015; Gross et al 2008) focus more on factors such as length of residence and authenticity of place rather than the relational dynamics be-tween various stakeholders and social actors that impact sense of self and one’s place within the city. Sense of place is commonly perceived as a process that fulfils human needs such as security and belonging (Relph 1976; Tuan 1974) and so the focus is on the affective functions of places rather than the cognitive or behavioural. It is seen as an affective concept that shapes

individual feeling, meaning and experiences of place, but within tourist spots the affective is secondary to meaning-making and behaviour. As place is “a piece of the whole environment which has been claimed by feelings” (Lewis 1979: 40) and as such, a singular place needs to be understood in a more dynamic way by examining how different meanings from various individuals come together to give a sense of place.

Increasingly, more city marketing campaigns are relying on sense of place development to give residents and tourists an experience that is distinctive and impressive but as they all follow similar place branding formulas, the experience of cities starts to look more similar than distinctive (Relph 1976). This can be seen in tourist hotpots such as the ‘I Amsterdam’ sculpture where place branding stands out to give a sense of place and instantly distinguishes place as Amsterdam rather than any other European city it could possibly be. However, as more cities use the same meditized technique as seen in fig.2, distinctiveness of the brand di-minishes.

To understand sense of place it is first necessary to study ‘a phenomenology of place’ (Relph 1976: 4-7) which can be done by examining “human situations, events, mean-ings, and experiences as they are known in everyday life but typically unnoticed beneath the level of conscious awareness” (Seamon & Sower 2017: 43). This paper aims to do this in terms of how mediatized place branding affects sense of place. Since my research aims to un-derstand sense of place and placelessness, it is first necessary to clarify what is meant by place and my working definition for place is a “territory of meanings” (Tuan 1977: 36). In his seminal work, Place and Placelessness, Relph divides places as experienced authentically or inauthentically to understand whether a place is placeless or not. Thus, I operationalise place-lessness from the lens of authenticity and analyzing meanings given to the sculpture by vari-ous individuals who may perceive the sculpture, its medization and the activities around it as inauthentic or not. However, I should also mention that as meanings are fluid and ever-chang-ing, authenticity is also a mutable quality that is perceived differently by one person to the another. Authenticity is not inherent in objects, monuments, practices or places but is project-ed on to place by society (Assi 2000).

Futhermore, authentic places are defined as “not mediated and distorted through a series of quite arbitrary social and intellectual fashions about how that experience should be, nor following stereotyped conventions” (Relph 1976: 64). Within the study of social mediatized

space then, where social media dictates conformity in convention and form, the concept of placelessness must be examined at all time. Relph discusses ‘standardized landscapes’ and ‘exchangeable environments’ that lead to inauthentic experiences of sense of place which can be largely attributed to “kitsch—an uncritical acceptance of mass values, or technique—the overriding concern with efficiency as an end in itself” (Seamon et al 2017: 45). Within social mediatized city branding kitsch can be seen embodied in how tourists emphatically pose for pictures and re-produce posts of the ‘I Amsterdam’ sculpture seemingly unaware of their role in furthering mass values - such as that of cosmopolitanism and city visibility. Technique refers to the preoccupation with achieving efficiency at all costs in such that the means and end are conflated and achieving repeatable results is the predominate goal. This is also preva-lent in the branding technique to develop sense of place as the stark iconography and obvious typography of the ‘I Amsterdam’ sign is unmistakable to the place brand and thus is an effi-cient embodiment for visibility goals of the campaign. Debord also alludes to how efficiency can make the spectacle ‘tautological’ making its existence for its own sake because “its means and its ends are identical” (Thesis: 13:6).

For both Relph and Debord’s critique of this tautology, though the former is talking about place and the other about mass media, cements that inauthenticity arises from the process of efficiency and control that can make places and acts of representation contrived rather than organic. In fact, in the case of the ‘I Amsterdam’ sculpture it is the act and preoc-cupation with the representation of the sign by making the means and end goal posing and posting the picture, that colours not only the place but experience as inauthentic placeless. The sculpture as a symbol of the city brand is imperative here as it imposes the meaning of itself as a symbol and calls for its replication in images by individuals to sustain its virtual visibility. For instance, if the sculpture was to be removed from the site, the Museumplein might be transformed from a site of spectacle to a site of real-time socialization, this is one of the findings of my research and will be elaborated in the findings section.

Joshua Meyrowitz’s book, No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behaviour (1985) , also expounds on how changes in communication and media technology alter behaviour in the public and private domains. He posits "media create new 'communities' " (144) and that "electronic media move people informationally to the same 'place' " (145). In the context of my research, the same place that Meyrowitz is gesturing toward is online urban

space formed by pictures posted on various social media channels such as Instagram and Facebook. Though online urban space is not singular, it exists on the platform of the internet not real life but strongly impacts the behaviour on actual sites like the Museumplein. This is what Meyrowitz essentially means by ‘no sense of place’. Unlike Debord and Relph though, he is not deeming social situations impacted by media as placeless, inauthentic or degraded but simply different as social behaviour and expectations have changed. Meyrowitz’s melding of Marshall McLuhhan’s media theories and Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical lens of viewing social behaviour and media, also reflects how mediatization imposes a narrative, epistemolo-gy and way of being on individuals. Meyrowitz’s theory will be discussed further in my find-ings on the performative and theatrics of the sculpture. The book also discusses the blurring lines between public and private that make social actor’s varied roles and performances also less discernible, for instance taking a personal phone call at work and vice versa. In a way, electronic media homogenises public and private life, pictures of vacations used to be a pri-vate affair shown to friends and family but with social media are shared with followers and weak social ties.

Marc Augé in his book, Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermoderni-ty (1995) discusses the homogenisation of certain places such as shopping centres, airports, etc that when individuals enter these places they become anonymous and enter what Bruno Latour would deem a liminal space of of in-betweenness (2005). The anonymity offered in big cities, travel and tourist spots give the Museumplein character as a liminal space for everyone there, as it is literally an in-between space between the different museums, shops, cafes and streets. Further, for tourists the Museumplein is a liminal space between the differ-ent places to see on their agenda and in between being at home and temporary stay. For resi-dents as well, the Museumplein signifies a place of work or leisure, where ”people are always, and never, at home” (109). Augé looks at the “spectacle of modernity” (76) and using Michel De Certeu’s dichotomy of space and place asserts a similar differentiation between ‘anthropo-logical place’ (place) and ‘non-place’. He posits that if an anthropo‘anthropo-logical place can be “fined as relational, historical and concerned with identity, then a space which cannot be de-fined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity will be a non-place” (87), by these standards the Museumplein is an anthropological site as it is secured with a historical and re-lational setting where identification of the self is apparent, such as residents and tourists being

able to distinguish each other. However, the social mediatization of the ‘I Amsterdam’ sculp-ture and the saturated use of media technologies such as cameras and particularly mobile phones solidify the Museumplein as liminal space where individuals, namely tourists, are not there even though they are physically there. Cell phone use and technologies that connect with media and the internet are increasingly thought of as ‘non-places’ (Coyne 2007; Case 2007). Thus, Augé’s dichotmoy of non-place and place is highly problematized in the in-stance of ‘I Amsterdam’ sculpture’s role in developing sense of place at the Museumplein as both characteristics of category prevail. This theory will be explored further in the findings and analysis section of my paper.

In order to understand sense of place at Museumplein, this paper will refer back to the concept of placelessness and non-places and its implications to understand if mediatized city branding practices give individuals an authentic or inauthentic sense of place through mean-ing-making.

3.3. Meaning-making and Sense of Place

In order to illustrate the inherent connection between meaning making and sense of place, it should be considered that many researchers deem place without meaning simply space. To beckon back to Augé and De Certeau’s distinction between anthropological place and non-place, and space and place, respectively. It is useful to note that researchers of human geography repeatedly expound the importance of meaning in establishing sense of place (Cresswell 2004; Tuan 1977; Taylor 2000). While “space is transformed into place as it ac-quires definition and meaning” (Tuan 1977:136), space represents the mere ‘co-ordinates for human life’ (Cresswell 2004:10).

Qualitative and quantitative researchers alike have analytically tried to map and under-stand the processes and attributes that make individuals give meaning to place and have unan-imously found that a single place make have various and differential meanings and identities from person to person; indeed, at times it is these conflictual or contradictory meanings that can give a place a distinctive character (Gustafson 2001; Tuan 1977; Canter 1997; Agnew 1987). Gustafson assesses the “spontaneous attributions of meaning as well as a number of underlying dimensions of meaning”; while he sees meanings that are understood within the

dimensions of self, others and environment he also claims that meanings shift per individual, time, relation to others, physical dimensions, spatiality and personal feelings (2001:5). That is, there is always an interplay between the dimensions of self (personal feelings and identity), others (social interplay) and environment (physical attributes and spatiality) that are at play to give meaning to a place that ultimately colours sense of place but might even make individu-als consider active placemaking . 4

Placemaking is a multi-disciplinary concept and approach to public space, planning, policy, 4

sociology, geography and environmental psychology that views place as an ongoing process rather than static space. The term refers to how places are shaped by individual, community and institutional meaning-making and practices, such as regeneration of neighbourhoods by community or government. One of the pioneers of the term placemaking was Jane Jacobs who in her work, ‘The Death and Life of Great American Cities’ (1961), expounded upon the im-portance of organic community building and support instead of state-led gentrification. Placemaking is now seen as not only a planning process but also a philosophy of place that views communities and individuals as active influencers of place and sense of place rather than passive. Meaning making is a process included in the broader framework of placemaking and one of the ways public place is multilayered (Berdiner Viani 2010).

Fig 3.Unveiling rainbow coloured ‘I Amsterdam’ sculpture during Gay Pride Week

The ‘I Amsterdam’ sculpture at the Museumplein’s stark iconography, typography and interactivity give it environmental attributes but also its branded identity within the square also gives it an added dimension as ‘symbolic and historic environment’ (Gustafson 2001:11). The sculpture can be used as a site of celebration or protest because the meaning given to the site in that particular time influences its identity as a place as well.

In the fig 3, the I Amsterdam sculpture is used to celebrate Gay Pride and also signal Amsterdam as a city of equality, freedom and sexual liberation. As per Gustafson’s meaning categorisation of environment, by changing the colours of the sculpture to rainbow the mean-ing has shifted. Those who take pictures with the rainbow-coloured sculpture represent not only the liberation and freedom of Amsterdam but those core values in themselves as well. Conversely, in the fig.4 the meaning given to the sculpture has changed from a site of celebra-tion to a site of protest and the sense of place has also changed from celebratory to reactive. As the meaning given to the sculpture changes, place is transformed as well. Thus, Massey’s hypothesis of places being processes rather than static entities rings true (1994, 1995). How-ever, the processes involved in meaning and place making are complex and involve many so-cial actors at various levels of agency. Unfortunately, within my literature review, explorations on the formation or impact of institutional meaning-making on placemaking and sense of place were sparse. Agnew’s work does illustrate how power relations and dynamics can im-pact meaning and place but the framework used is highly politicised and does not account for the more latent modes of neoliberalism and mediatization that subconsciously influence place and identity (1987, 1989). In order to understand how city branding influences individual meaning making and sense of place, it is also important to understand how institutional mean-ings are implemented spatially and symbolically. Thus, I include city marketers as a separate category and divide my research in terms of three groups of social actors that are involved in meaning-making and giving a sense of place around the sculpture:

1. City Marketers 2. Tourists

The meaning making arises from the relational understanding these social actors have to the sculpture itself but also their use value for the sculpture such as, picture taking or busking hotspot. Twigger-Ross and Uzzell argue that all individuals use place to either construct or re-affirm self-identity (1996: 208). They identify four aspects of identity formation that can im-pact meaning and placemaking: distinction (discernibility between places), valuation (positive or negative perception of place), continuity (a place that signifies a continuation of its attrib-utes and the self) and change (understanding place in a temporal sense). Thus, even when meaning and use may vary between different social actors at Museumplein, the common thread that binds them together is that they are placemaking based on establishing their self-identity. Meanings given to the sculpture are impacted by external factors as well, such as, if tourists have seen pictures of the sculpture many times before on social media, their meaning and use value may conform with what they perceived it to be online. In order to systematical-ly understand how and why different social actors (tourists and residents) assignment of meaning to the sculpture is linked to their sense of place, it is first important to understand the difference and dynamics between top-down meanings ascribed by city marketers and the bot-tom-up meaning-making processes that ultimately give a site like ‘I Amsterdam’ sculpture its sense of place. My research found that there two power dynamics at work in meaning making at Museumplein that gives it sense of place:

• The meaning(s) the place gives to the social actor: This process of meaning-making is top down with city marketers being at the helm and assigning a place, building or neighbourhood with a particular meaning. Within this process, city marketers may also decide for whom or which group a certain place is geared toward and that group may feel a greater sense of place or attachment. For instance, the ‘I Amsterdam’ sculpture was erected at the Museumplein as a campaign to regenerate the city’s image and pique tourist attention. In doing so, the city marketers not only assigned ‘I Amsterdam’ sculpture with meanings of modernity and regeneration but also decided upon a target audience - tourists. If today the sculpture is best described as ‘touristy’, it is a deliberate consequence of ef-forts by city marketers to imbibe the sculpture with a certain meaning for a certain audi-ence and group. Issues of inclusivity also arise from this type of meaning-making as

indi-viduals may feel excluded from certain places, such as, the ‘I Amsterdam’ sign due to the group they belong to. This aspect will be illuminated in the paper later.

• The meaning(s) social actors give to the place: This process of meaning-making is bottom up as social actors though influenced by top down meanings have the agency to mould or even contradict the established meaning a place might have. Referring to the previous example of meaning-making in fig.2 and fig.3, the first example is indicative of the meaning the place gives to the social actor. That is, by colouring the sign in rainbow colours, the city marketers (person) have imbibed the sculpture (place) with a particular meaning (process) and given it its sense of place of celebration. However, in fig.3, pre-sumably the residents (person) have taken over the sculpture (place) and have given the meaning and sense of place as a site of protest (process). Thus, actors can supplant the top-down meanings prescribed to a place and it is this relational meaning-making between these two processes that can help understand the place making process. Places can also take a life of their own, or rather, only take a life of their own once social actors start giv-ing meangiv-ing to places. For instance, part of the sculpture’s international success owes it-self to the ubiquitous social media posts generated by visitors.

These top down and bottom up dynamics in the meaning-making process of a place, in particular, ‘I Amsterdam’ sculpture are employed to understand power dynamics at work in developing meanings and sense of place. However, within the process whereby top-down and bottom-up meanings interact and intersect to assign sense of place are dynamic and in flux. This meaning-making process that informs the sense of place for various social actors have been discovered by analysing interviews to decipher the trends and categories of meaning process at the ‘I Amsterdam’ sign.

4. Research Methods and Questions

This research began with an interest in how city marketers envision successful branding campaigns with heavy involvement by visitors to produce online content; whereas, individu-als use city branding to project a cosmopolitan image of the self online that is in turn coveted

by others. Thus, producing a cyclical demand for urban experiences that can be seen as a mu-tually beneficial process. However, once my empirical research started and I did field obser-vations and interviews at the ‘I Amsterdam’ sculpture, I found that to truly understand the role of mediatization and self branding, it is necessarily to take a holistic view rather than just fo-cusing on what is happening at the site and online. I literally took a step back and started to look at the Museumplein as an ecosystem of meaning-making and developing sense of place. As well as how various individuals are involved in developing a sense of place in mediatized and non-mediatized ways. Both are equally important as the various meanings associated with the sculpture have ramifications for how the ecosystem of Museumplein functions with the sculpture being at the heart. In order to truly understand the impact of mediatization it is nec-essarily to look at the real life processes at work rather than only representations of phe-nomenon online. Though Debord’s argument is that reality and representation are difficult if not impossible to separate, taking a wider view of the spectacle helped my research in making this distinction. This shift in focus of topic and scope also shifted my research methods from largely dependent on online content analysis to relying more on interviews and observation. My thesis then became “an in-depth exploration from multiple perspectives of the complexity and uniqueness of a particular project, policy, institution, program or system in a ‘real life’” (Simons 2009: 21) at the Museumplein. Though I am looking at the ‘I Amsterdam’ sculpture in particular I do believe that my research has greater implications for mediatized city branding across different contexts as the campaign is one that has been replicated and adapted in various countries. Also, since mediatization is so intricately diffused in urban life, explorations of sense of place in a wider context within highly mediatized places can be a beneficial lens to draw comparisons between different places, city brands and even countries.

I chose ethnographic study by conducting interviews and participatory observation as well as content analysis of Instagram posts to explore the connections between social repre-sentations and urban space. I conducted 37 useful and usable interviews in total, though the attempted interviews were much higher. 24 interviews with tourists, 12 interviews with resi-dents and 1 in-depth interview with a city marketing executive along content analysis of 400 Instagram posts. I combined these three data collection methods to add rigor and a nuanced understanding of not only the site but also the unseen forces at work such as around the sculp-ture or online space. Combining various methods also strengthens internal validity as different

methods can fill in research gaps otherwise left unexamined (Denzin 2010). Observations were carried over the span of two months with special focus on how individuals used and in-teracted with the sculpture in particular while taking pictures. Later, observations also focused on how individuals around and further away from the sculpture react to activity at the sculp-ture and how they occupy space. I conducted a total of twenty-one observations at the Muse-umplein that fluctuated in duration depending on the weather. The weather’s impact on activi-ty and behaviour also often provided data that enriched my understanding of sense of place. For instance, if sudden rain would occur, though some tourists would move on, many would not and the rain would become part of the ‘European experience’ as one interviewee put it. I noted details activity and individuals, though as observations went on, I spread my observa-tional site to the entire square and shops and cafes around as well. I also took observation photos and some have been added to this paper.

I approached individuals at the sculpture while they were either looking at the sculpture or taking pictures. One of my strategies was to offer to take pictures to start conversation and ask them for an interview and the response was usually positive. I would first inquire whether they were a tourist or resident and from which country. Every person I interviewed at close proximity to the sculpture was a tourist. Next, I would inquire how they had come to know of the sign and mostly found out that they had seen pictures on social media. Then I would ask regarding their activity and level of engagement on social media, whether they would be post-ing the pictures they took on social media and who their audience was. My last questions had to do with meaning making and sense of place, I would ask regarding what they felt the sculp-ture stood for, what they thought of it and what impact they felt it gave to the Museumplein and their experience of Amsterdam in general; and how they think the square would change if the sign was removed. Also, I would try to gauge if interviewees were cognisant of their roles as prosumers of the city brand by asking how they felt about the city possibly using their im-ages for free. Borrowing from Gabrielle Berdiner-Viani’s concept of ‘guided tours’ whereby Viani recreates individual lived experiences in to representations (2016), I would ask some respondents to take me through their posing, picture taking and posting on social media phas-es to understand the difference between what is posed for and what is edited and posted. These moments were exceptionally important in understanding how sense of place is translat-ed online and the meanings individuals choose to express for their online audience.

Once I broadened my scope from just the sculpture to the rest of the square I started in-terviews with residents. I would ask about how long they had lived in the city, how often they frequented the Museumplein and for what purpose, how they felt about the sculpture and the activity at it. Lastly, I would try to ask all interviewees about how they would feel if the sculp-ture was removed from the square and how they think that would impact the space.

In order to understand the main research question of this paper of how the ‘I Amster-dam’ sculpture impacts sense of place as a mediatized city brand symbol, I explored the meaning-making process and found that as meanings change so does sense of place. Thus, this led me to three sub-questions to understand my main research question better. Firstly, what are the various meanings attached to the ‘I Amsterdam’ sculpture by tourists and resi-dents that either conform or conflict with the meanings assigned by city marketers. Secondly, what are the mediatized and non-mediatized ways in which residents and tourists add to the sense of place at the Museumplein? Thirdly, do tourists and residents assign meaning and sense of place to the ‘I Amsterdam’ sign as placeless or not. I find that these questions give me a holistic view of the various meaning and place making processes and can help me test the validity of my hypothesis.

My thesis supervisor who has worked extensively on Instagram’s role and impact in creating urban online and offline space selected posts from a corpus of over 4.1 million geo-tagged Instagram posts that either contain a location tag containing "iamsterdam", a location tag of "Museumplein" in combination with a caption or hashtag containing "iamsterdam", or geo coordinates around Museumplein in combination with an "iamsterdam" hashtag or cap-tion. This resulted in nearly 9,000 posts by over 7,700 users. He then randomly sampled 500 of these posts and checked which ones were still to be found online. Exactly 25% of the 500 had been deleted, leaving a sample of 375 posts. I selected and studied his entire corpus while my own research generated about 200 more posts but I chose to pick 400 in greater detail. I particularly focused on motility of participants to see how different individuals occupy and interact with the sculpture differently; hashtags used and comments to understand how per-sonal brands are expressed while simultaneously denoting meaning and sense of place.

In order to understand the ‘I Amsterdam’ campaign and sculpture’s role in city brand-ing, it is first important to understand the historical and spatial context in which the sculpture exists: the Museumplein. Especially, since the sense of place discussed in this paper entails the sense of place at the Museumplein as affected by the ‘I Amsterdam’ sign. Following is a Google map of the area to give a visual and spatial representation, the sculpture is geotagged as number Fig. 5:

Fig. 5 Museumplein Google Map

According to the Amsterdam Gemeente (city council), the area derives its name from its role as passageway between prominent museums and cultural spots.The Museumplein is cur-rently a public square in the Amsterdam-South district but it was not always open to the pub-lic. In fact, until the 19th-century, the municipality had deemed it a luxury neighbourhood for its prime location and was only accessible to the city’s elite (Amsterdam Gemeente, online). The construction of the Rijksmuseum, the Royal Concertgebouw, the Van Gogh Museum and Stedelijk Museum only added to the exclusivity of the area. According to the website, “before housing was built, space was not only used for exhibitions, but also for all kinds of sports ac-tivities, at that time an elite affair (sic)” (translated by Google translate from Dutch to Eng-lish).

A YouTube channel called ‘De Verdwenen Stad Amsterdam’ (The Lost City of Amsterdam) details the history of the Museumplein. According to the video, the area that now is known as Vondelpark was the first to be developed from 1864 - 1890 and was known as the ‘Tuin van de Herensocieteit De Herenigng’ which roughly translates to ‘Gentlemen’s Gardens’. Much like the gardens, the rest of the area was developed and open for a sub-sec-tion of society that was largely affluent and male. The P.C. Hooftstraat, a main street in the area was developed in 1872. One of the most iconic activities at the square were ice skating that was set up by the Ice Club in 1891 but the rinks in the winter were only open members.

Fig. 6 Collection City Archive Amsterdam: Photo Printing Date Unknown, Anonymous

While the city officials were very keen to expand the development of the area, they were deterred by the Royal Washing Machine factory that was located in the area from 1621-1906 which impeded growth. However, after the success of the ‘Interationale Kolonie & Uitvoerhandel Tentoonstellig’ (International Colonial Export Trade Exhibition) in 1883, the city council decided to develop this area as a cultural international hub. Thus began the

con-struction of the Rijksmuseum and Royal Concertgebouw that opened in 1885 and 1888, re-spectively. In 1892, the area’s redevelopment took another milestone step and the construction of the Stedelijk Museum started in 1893, two years after the museum opened and another suc-cessful exhibition took place - ‘Nog Een Wereld Tentoonstelling’ (Another world exhibition). The square finally got it’s name as Museumplein on 24th March 1903 which is shown in the video as a newspaper clipping. In 1906, the demolition of the washing machine factory finally took place and gave the city a chance to truly and expansively redevelop the area. By 1953, the Museum street came to be known as "the shortest highway in the Netherlands” due its high level of traffic but later became a popular parking spot for buses. At what point the Mu-seumplein became a public space rather than a playground for the elite is unclear from my desk research as even the official documents online obscure this detail. However, it seems that around the turn of the 19th century the Museumplein became more open to individuals from different neighbourhoods and class. The Van Gogh Museum opened in 1973 and it is during the decades of the 60’s-90’s that the Museumplein saw a vast number of protests and demon-strations most prominently against the Vietnam war, nuclear weapons and for equal rights.

In 1999 the Museumplein was redeveloped once again with South district blocked to cars and returned to pedestrians and cyclists. The Danish landscape architect Sven Ingvar An-derson laid a green carpet over the square to keep it open and be amenable to various cultural and sport activities. (Amsterdam Gemeente). Today, the square is as busy as ever with the re-cent Europa League final between Ajax and Manchester United bringing an estimated “100,000 Ajax fans” (Het Parool, 2017).

As is apparent in the pictures from Museumplein today and in the early 1900’s, a lot has changed though the square still is a major social and cultural hub in the city. However, now I turn to the way the ‘I Amsterdam’ sculpture has impacted the Museumplein and which is very different in its use and meaning due to the heavy mediatization of the city branding campaign. The ‘I Amsterdam’ sculpture often referred to as the letters or sign, is part of the wider ‘I Am-sterdam’ city marketing and branding campaign. In order to understand the campaign and sculpture better, I conducted an in-depth interview with one of the marketing executives at the

Fig. 7 Photo Echt Amsterdams Nieuws. Europa League Ajax Tournament. May 24, 2017

‘I Amsterdam’ marketing company. The information and insights about the campaign and company in this paper are all derived from this interview. The marketing executive’s name has been kept anonymous on request. ‘I Amsterdam’ as a city marketing company was consolidated 12 years ago in 2005 when Amsterdam was slipping on different rankings. Ac-cording to the European Cities Monitor 2005, though Amsterdam ranks well on the business scale at 6th it is at the 18th place on improvement. Kavaratzis suggests that “although the ac-curacy of such rankings could be doubted and the importance attributed to them by city resi-dents or tourists has not been examined, the fact is that officials in most cities, including clearly Amsterdam, take them very seriously” (2008:65). His position rings true in the case of Amsterdam as it was during this time that in an effort towards “imagineering” (Pike 2011) the city of Amsterdam from the world’s sex and drug capital to a more modern and creative city. The municipality hired a consultancy firm to advise on a stronger city marketing policy and campaign. Part of the strategy was to establish one organization responsible for the city marketing and branding, so 12 years ago ‘I Amsterdam’ was funded.

Prior to the setup of the ‘I Amsterdam’ company, the municipality organized a pitch in 2004 to get some of the most creative marketing talent to come up with unique and dynamic branding for the city. Of the five agencies, two came up with the concept of ‘I Amsterdam’ as a city brand. Finally, Kessels Kamer, a well-known marketing firm was chosen to execute the campaign. They made what is referred to as the Bible of ‘I Amsterdam’ including the logo, colours and font etc in the handbook for other teams to replicate in a unified way. Most im-portantly, the core values of the city were set up and were to be reflected within all cam-paigns, activities, merchandise and content: creativity, innovation and spirit of commerce.

To-day, the ‘I Amsterdam’ website and social media pages have gained international recognition and visibility, as most respondents shared that it is the first result when they Googled Amster-dam. Whether it was organising this area for the wealthy in the 1800s, developing the Muse-umsquare as a bustling cultural hub in 1900s or redeveloping the Museumplein as a tourist spot and democratic space; the history and current life of the square speaks to the transforma-tive uses and implications a place can have when meanings given to a place shift. The sense of place has evolved as meanings given to the Museumplein by the city planners changed and with that also who and what the square is for. Thus, meanings given to place not only affect sense of place but also inclusivity. According to Gustafson, places are in a constant state of flux as they are “continually produced and re-produced in interaction with their surroundings and thus may acquire new meanings over a period of time” (2001:6) changing the ways in which people come to know or feel about place.

In order to understand how city planners and marketers ascribe meaning and sense of place to

6. Findings

During my research I realized that there are latent tensions and contradictions between meanings and sense of place for residents and tourists due to the mediatization of the city branding symbol - the sculpture. It also became clear that actually single interviewees can also hold ambivalent or conflicting meanings about sense of place simultaneously. Re-searchers like Jakle have claimed that tourists and not locals are the more telling respondents when it comes to gauging sense of place as tourism “involves the deliberate searching out of place experience” (Jakle 1987: 8). I on the other hand found that while tourists are sources of diverse and eclectic insight; the residents are usually able to give a temporal and comparative sense of place which reflect coninuity or change (Twigger-Ross 1996). I realized that the “embodied performances of both locals and tourists play an important part in the very creation or at the very least, modification, of the culturally and socially constructed meanings of places” (Rakic´et al 2011:1614) is a way to grasp sense of place.

With this in view, I first do an analysis of the most used words by the city marketer, tourists and residents in interviews while also looking at most used Instagram

hash-tags to get an overall and comparative idea of meanings regarding the campaign and sculp-ture. Then, I explore how the ‘I Amsterdam’ brand is envisioned by marketers, and how meaning and sense of place is developed through social mediatization by looking at the inter-view with the marketing executive. After establishing the top-down meanings and sense of place of the city marketing campaign, I look at how these meanings are passed down to tourists and residents and how these individuals interact with these marketing methods. The section after that, deals with the bottom-up meanings and sense of place at play for tourists and residents to understand whether they view the spectacle of ‘social’ mediatization to be placeless practice or not. Performative elements unexpectedly figured very much in to my findings, so I dedicate a section to the analysis of interviews with tourists and residents within a dramaturgical lens. Lastly, I find a connecting thread between the various sense of place (or placelessness) has been the sentiment and meaning of ambivalence, so I explore how ambigu-ity in meanings to a place can actually yield a wealth of insight rather than void assumptions.

6.1. Words That Denote Meaning and Sense of Place

Several researchers have unpacked how meaning-making gives everyday places a sense of place and self (Berdiner-Viani 2013 2016) and even how individuals ascribe meaning to extraordinary places like vacation homes and nature (Gustafson 2001). According to Marc Augé, “place is completed through the word, through the allusive exchange of a few pass-words between speakers who are conniving in private complicity” (77) which speaks to the common language that may bind or separate one group of speaker from another, and even one person’s sense of place from another’s. Just as moving bodies transform a space to place, so do meanings colour perceptions, experiences and even expectations (de Certeau 1984). Mean-ing is inherently denoted and imparted through language and “the purpose of social semiotics is to study signifying practices in social and cultural contexts, to analyze human meaning-making as a social practice” (Angermuller et al 2014:263). Thus, using the ‘three functional components of language’’, I analyze these word clouds by categorising words as either ‘Ideational’ (representations and ideas about the world), interpersonal (social interactions)

The following word clouds have been formed by analyzing my interviews with a city marketing executive, tourists and residents to see trends of what words are most prevalent and give meaning to the sculpture and the Museumplein. In order to understand the commonalities and discrepancies between what is spoken and shared in interviews in comparison to what is posted to the artifice of social media, I looked at the most used Instagram hashtags. I analyze each word cloud (generated from www.wordit.com) while drawing comparison and contrast between all four.

Fig. 8 City Marketer Word Cloud

This word cloud is different from the rest as it is generated after interview data collected from a single interviewee. However, as the marketing executive is a representative of the ‘I Amsterdam’ campaign, I find his interview and word cloud is important to understand the meanings associated with the campaign and sculpture at an institutional level. Also, this cloud is inclusive of the entire ‘I Amsterdam’ campaign and not just the namesake sculpture. The words that stand out the most are Amsterdam, media, social, tourists, creativity, municipality, inclusive, brand, liveability, landmark, technology, Bible, residents, stories, values, qualita-tive, brand, core and innovation. What is most striking is that all words used have a very posi-tive connotation except overcrowding and brexit (depending if you were ‘leave’ or ‘stay’). ‘Ideational’ words include DNA, creativity, qualitative, liveability, proactive, reactive, core,

icon, values, inclusive, stories and beautiful. They assign meaning to the ‘I Amsterdam’ cam-paign and the city itself as a beacon of innovation, creativity and a prime location to not only visit but live and invest as well. These words represent meanings of modernity as the iPhone and Instagram are used to repeatedly. Secondly, interpersonal words collide with ideational ones such as stories which signifies not only an idea but also the social interactions that make these stories possible. Interpersonal words can have similarities to ideational words as social interactions are what make possible representations and ideas about the world. Interpersonal words are chosen also to signify literal social interaction such as festivals, technology, activi-ties, overcrowding, paractivi-ties, etc that give the campaign and Amsterdam meaning as a social place. Municipality stands out as a textual word as it diffuses the idea of systems with the so-cial interaction of bureaucracy within the city also denoting the importance of the municipali-ty in making the work of ‘I Amsterdam’ possible.

On an empirically reflexive level, as an interviewer I am aware that my questions might have impacted certain choice of words. For instance, if I had not asked regarding the fall-backs of the sculpture’s success the topic of overcrowding might have not come up.

Fig.9 Resident Word Cloud

The most obvious words are crowded, icon, perform, landmark, theatre, tourist, interac-tive and fake. From these words, icon, landmark, tourist and interacinterac-tive are the words that match most with the city marketer’s which show an alignment of meaning. Similarities be-tween ideational words such as icon, freedom and interactive are important to link meaning making as it represents ideas that are held by both residents and city marketers. However, the importance of context in words is also important; for instance, while selfie was used favourably by the city marketer in furthering the city brand, residents used it in a dismissive way referring that the sculpture is a site for selfie narcissism. The two negative words that stand out the most are crowded and fake which refer to the meaning given to the sculpture as touristy. Residents regard the sculpture as fake on two accounts: firstly, they compare the modern sculpture to the historical buildings of museum around the square and find it to be an unsophisticated way to establish the city brand within a historical place. Secondly, the medi-ated meaning and use given it to by the city and tourists of picture taking, not only adds to the inauthenticity at the sculpture and square but also makes it overcrowded. This also denotes the social interaction aspect of meaning making as the sculpture is seen as ‘touristy’ due to the social relations between tourists and residents which is latently antagonistic. Though almost all residents brought up issues of inauthenticity, even the critical respondents did assign posi-tive meanings of community, inclusivity, liveliness and visibility to the sculpture by using words like good atmosphere, everyone, international, ambiance and creative. These ambigu-ous meanings of criticism and appreciations speaks to this research’s findings on the ambiva-lence in meaning-making and sense of place at the Museumplein due to the sculpture’s media-tization.

Fig.10 Tourist Word Cloud

Icon, landmark, tourist and interactive stand out and align with city marketers and resi-dents which signify that the consensus of meaning between all groups is that the sculpture is an iconic symbol of the city, though some tourists and residents think of it as an inauthentic icon. Unlike the residents and city marketers though, this word cloud does not gesture towards meanings of overcrowding or the perceived inauthenticity that residents felt. Even though in my interviews with tourists I did come across tourists who echoed the inauthentic or ‘fake’ nature of the sculpture, it is not picked up by the word cloud which shows that placelessness is not prevalent for most tourists as it is for residents. Unlike residents, tourists seem to assign a lot of meaning to the sculpture based on social media as can be seen by words connect, pho-to, show, proof, friends and followers. The meaning given to the sculpture also seems to be a symbol of not only being in Amsterdam but also cosmopolitanism as is denoted with words such as well-travelled, travel and cultured. It also seems that there are more ideational and textual words being used in this cloud than interpersonal as social interactions online are re-ferred to more than on-site interactions. For instance, words like connect, friends and follow-ers would ordinarily mean social connection but as these words refer to online connections, this is online representation social interaction which I take to be textual in its melding of in-terpersonal with ideational. The tourist word cloud has more similarities with that of city

marketer’s than the residents as there is a focus on revelry such as included in the city mar-keter’s discussion of events and festivals with the words such as party and music. Technology and social media also figure more in to this word cloud like with words such as snapchat, In-stagram, smartphone, hashtag and posts. Though residents mention social media, they do not differentiate between various channels signifying that residents meaning-making of the sculp-ture is less social media-centric than that of city marketers and tourists. The dominant mean-ing given to the sculpture by tourists then, especially in relation to residents, seems to be that of Amsterdam and of their own cosmopolitanism mediated by picture taking and posting on social media

Fig. 11 Instagram Hashtags Word Cloud

This word cloud was generated by analyzing a corpus of 400 Instagram posts and the most used hashtags by tourists as none of the posts seemed to be from residents. Unsurpris-ingly, ‘#iamsterdam’ is the most common hashtag which is also the most used word by city marketers. Though, contextually the way city marketers use ‘I Amsterdam’ is different than the way tourists perceive it. This was revealed to me when I asked tourists what they thought the sculpture stood for and almost all tourists responded that it was a symbol of being in Ams-terdam but when asked if they identified it as official branding of the city, most tourists were unaware that there is something as a city’s brand in the first place. While, city marketers try to be deliberate and calculated to form easily identifiable brands, it seems that city branding is so

normalised within urban contexts that individuals do not usually identify city brands.This speaks to how top-down meanings can impact bottom-up meanings of place but the influence of institutional meanings is so ingrained within the mechanics of the spectacle of society, that it’s usually not detected by social actors.

The ideational hashtags used most denote global capital of travel and cosmopolitanism which is revealed in words such as #wanderlust, #travelgram, #travel, #eurotrip and #vaca-tion. Hashtags like #famtravel, #love and #friendship fall in the interpersonal category and assign the sculpture and Amsterdam meaning of a place as milestone where memories are be-ing made that individuals may cherish with their loved ones.

As words can be seen as ‘actualised meaning potential’ (Angermuller et al 2014:265), I think these word clouds offer a snapshot in to my interviews and content analysis of Insta-gram posts while allowing for superficial comparisons. However, as context is integral to-wards the meaning words have, I identify this as a limitation within this mode of analysis but I have tried to counter by contextualising meanings for certain words. This method was cho-sen in an experimental capacity and hope that through this analysis I have established how words and meanings are connected. In the later sections, I will take this a step further and look at how meanings impact sense of place.

6.2. How City Marketers Assign Meaning and Sense of Place

It [‘I Amsterdam’ Letters at Museumplein] is the most photographed site nowadays [in Amsterdam]. Social media figures in a lot of all our campaigns. I always show the I Amster-dam sign in my presentations and I always say that I believe, even though it isn't scientifically proven, but I truly believe there are two reasons for the success of the sign. The first being that Amsterdam is lacking in icon landmark. You go to Paris, you take picture of Eiffel Tow-er… In Amsterdam, yes, we have bikes and yes, we have canals but we have 165 canals so when people make a picture of a canal, it could be anyone…Second of all, I believe, it was 2005 or 2006 when I started my Facebook account and really believe that all these people were looking for proof and status updates about where they have been. You know, look at me I have been to Amsterdam! So these two factors led to a lot of social media exposure for ‘I Amsterdam’ I think. (sic) - ‘I Amsterdam’ Marketing Executive

The Amsterdam city brand was started in an effort to not only imagineer the global rep-utation of the city but also to attract tourists and businesses as a cultural and commercial bea-con. Imagineering, a term first coin termed by Walt Disney that combines imagining with en-gineering to denote a high level of creativity and innovation that is implemented within space (such as a theme park), is a useful term to understand how neoliberal cities are imagineering cities for mobile technology and social media. Developing a strong and identifiable sense of place is a cornerstone of imagineering as it gives place univocal meaning and identity, for in-stance, Disneyland conjures up images and meanings of wonder, fantasy and family . In a col5 -lection of essays, Branding and Branding Geographies, it is posited that ‘imagineering’ in the urban sphere is a very deliberate action whereby “urban politicians and planners have often tried to capitalise on distinctive local subcultures formulating and reinforcing commercially oriented strategies of place branding” (Pike 2011:190). Now, social media is part of mass cul-ture, it should be noted that social media channels such as Facebook and Instagram started out as counter-culture movements that became mainstream later. A hallmark of neoliberalism is that it very successfully ‘recuperates’ counter culture in to mass culture to produce profits 6 and normalisation of culture (Plant 1992) and this can be seen with corporations and cities recuperating social media from information sharing platforms in to corporate agenda. De-bord’s spectacle for city marketers then is something to be sought as the bigger the spectacle, the more visibility the larger the profits. For instance, New York City is an example of the spectacle of a city being so pervasive that one doesn’t even have to be in New York to get a sense of place: movies, books, advertisements and social media have represented this urban space so much that it is perceived as the pinnacle of urban life and branding.

See, ‘Teaching Against Global Capitalism and the New Imperialism: A Critical 5

Pedagogy’ (2005): While that may be the dominant narrative around Disneyland’s sense of place, there may be others who might assign other meanings to it such as the inherent ex-ploitation of neoliberalism, what has been deemed as ‘Disneyland capitalism’ (McLaren et al 2005:161).

See Guy Debord’s ‘The Society and the Spectacle’ (1967)A term from Situationist theory: 6

“Spectacular consumption preserves the old culture in congealed form, going so far as to re-cuperate and rediffuse even its negative manifestations” (Thesis: 192:56).