Facebook as soft infrastructure: producing and performing community in a mixed tenure housing development

Witten, Karen; Kearns, Robin; Opit, Simon; Fergusson, Emma

doi:10.1080/02673037.2020.1769035

Cited by 9 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…That the Prime Minister chose to communicate casually via Facebook has significance. Facebook both generates and is generated by spatialised community (Witten et al, 2020). Community Facebook pages engage residents within an imagined, if not actual, neighbourhood and offer participants opportunities of interacting with each other for a variety of reasons.…”

Section: Home As a Key Spatial Settingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Narrative and metaphors in New Zealand’s efforts to eliminate COVID‐19

Kearns

2021

Geographical Research

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This commentary considers the ways in which spatialised metaphors were mobilised within a larger narrative in the quest to eliminate COVID‐19 in Aotearoa/New Zealand. In doing so, it examines the links between language and socio‐political discourse, focusing on tropes that invoke and engage with geographies of everyday life. The foundational contention is that, to a large extent, language constructs our lived reality. After reviewing scholarship linking language and disease, the commentary turns to a case study of New Zealand’s response to COVID‐19. The public health goal was to instil caution and protective practices in the population at large as a defence against transmission. The role of narrative and metaphor in daily press conferences from the Prime Minister and Director General of Health through March and April 2020 is examined by drawing on evidence from media reporting. Three key metaphors are considered: bubbles, levels, and the team, with each metaphor having spatialised implications in the popular imagination. The commentary considers perceptual and behavioural implications of this strategic use of metaphor. I speculate on the ways in which language has an agency such that, until the widespread availability of vaccine, an infectious disease can be restricted through mobilising the population.

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Section: Home As a Key Spatial Settingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Narrative and metaphors in New Zealand’s efforts to eliminate COVID‐19

Kearns

2021

Geographical Research

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“…Residents reported a stronger sense of community caring, an increased connection with their neighbourhoods, and also reported an added sense of responsibility to protect the whole island. Respondent comments above illustrate Waihekeans not only feeling like a community in response to the pandemic threat, but actively 'performing' community (Witten et al, 2020) in ways common to smaller communities at a distance from, and increasingly in distinction from, normative metropolitan governance. Other data from the same survey revealed that locals were not only connecting with their immediate neighbourhoods more, but also engaging with the broader community through converting the lockdown constraints into opportunities to connect with neighbours, the outdoors and broader community needs.…”

Section: Building Community Connectedness As Shared Identity For a Localised Pandemic Responsementioning

confidence: 99%

What keeps an island community COVID‐19 free in a global pandemic?

Oliver¹,

Lindsay

Kearns

2021

N Z Geog

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The COVID pandemic has offered opportunities for islands and other relatively isolated communities to establish pandemic-protection boundaries. A July 2020 survey of Waiheke Island residents sought views on how the island had remained COVID-19 free, despite proximity to a city of 1.6 million (Auckland, NZ). Many attributed that status to 'pure luck' or a 'moat' effect. However, many also attributed freedom from COVID-19 to reinforcing high-level community cohesiveness and shared values. The Waiheke community's response can be seen as a microcosm of New Zealand as an island nation and an exemplar of a response to pandemic threats uniquely possible for small islands.

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