Daiva Siudikienė. Saulė Jokūbauskienė (Vilnius University)
The fundamental principle of communication is the transfer of communication message and the attention of the audience. Vilnius as the capital city has been mentioned several times in the world media: during the pandemic, when it proposed to become one big cafe (Lonely Planet 2020), and by being among the twenty happiest cities in the world (The World Happiness Report 2023), surprising the Vilniusites themselves. Vilnius is known as a green city (Go Vilnius; Hugsi 2023), and the essential provision of Lithuania’s image strategy states: “Co-created in Lithuania” (The Strategy for the Presentation of Lithuania Abroad 2020), which is also in line with global sustainability trends.
In the debate about the development of modern cities, the cultivation of cities and places as brands is an important topic, since the ability to show its uniqueness and strengths means economic benefits and an attractive image for each city (Doratli, Falsi and Riza, 2011). A place brand is defined as a network of associations created by the visual, verbal, and behavioral expression of a place, which is implemented in relation to the goals, communication, values and general culture of the visitors to the place and the image of the place (Braun and Zenker, 2010). The importance of the city brand has been growing significantly and has a positive impact on the city’s economy, which is one of the most important factors that determine the well-being of the population.
However, city’s inhabitants constitute a very important component of the communication of the city’s image: How do they see the city? What does motivate them to identify with the city? What does it mean to be a Vilniusite? etc. The residents of the city and their participation in the creation of stories about the city play a very important part in the success of the city and the communication of the city. The history of the city is the thread that connects the Vilniusites of the past, present and future.
The purpose of the presentation is to present the research that analyzes how the history of Vilnius emerges in contemporary narratives about the city. The theoretical basis of the presentation is the narrative paradigm, which emphasizes that people are storytellers by nature, and the whole world is made up of a network of stories, each of which has unique conflicts, characters, beginnings, climaxes, and endings (Fisher, 1984). Gordon Pradlas claims that without stories, people’s experiences would simply be meaningless avalanches of sensations, resulting from an undifferentiated flow of events. Stories are the preservation of collective memory, essential mediated structures that define the social and cultural behavior of people, formed as a response to their encounter with reality.
The author claims that the sharp differences between individual cultural groups can be explained precisely by the fact that they interpret the world and its phenomena differently (Pradl, 1984). The vital importance of stories for human communities was also emphasized by Ernest G. Bormann, stating that human beings are social storytellers (Homo Narrans); therefore, it is natural for them to constantly interpret social reality and transmit human experience to each other in the form of stories and narratives (Bormann, 1985).
The members of modern society, active users of media, live and carry out professional, social or leisure activities with the help of media. It has changed the usual ways and forms of how they realize their needs and goals. This type of research and its continuation is extremely important to understand the changing information behavior of media audiences and new forms of virtual community, characterized by various emerging knowledge sharing practices (Siudikienė, Jokūbauskienė 2023).
On Vilnius 700th birthday, the city invites you to participate in the events and celebrations that are widely discussed on social media, so the research allows us to explore the communication features of Vilnius birthday celebration in social networks. Two Facebook communities characterized by their active communication about the city and its residents were chosen for the study. Our research method is a qualitative and quantitative content analysis.