Carina Rosborg Thornval

Communications technology and meaning-formation processes in urban development

The Royal Danish Academy – Architecture, Design, Conservation
Project period: 2022-2025

In a nutshell, what is the topic of your PhD project?

The aim of this PhD project is to understand how social media, news media and the public debate in general affect dynamics of meaning in urban development projects. I’ve decided to focus on the large urban development project Lynetteholm, because the project has sparked intense debate, and continues to do so. What is at stake, and what significance does the nature of the public debate have for such a project? The project is therefore largely about understanding the conditions for the democratic dialogue on urban development.

What makes your research relevant?

The Danish government is about to implement ever more ambitious initiatives to solve complex and multi-faceted problems faced by the population. You could say that today it is crucial that the democratic dialogue with and within the population (our traditional objective in Denmark) is maintained to ensure that such implementation processes can be realized. At the same time, information and communications technologies have changed the conditions for this dialogue. We have to understand these new conditions and their consequences to further understand how we create the best conditions for democratic dialogue in the future. So far, I have used methods such as digital ethnography to analyze the debate on Lynetteholm, to understand how consensus and the dynamics of polarization may arise, and to understand what is important for how they develop.

What are you hoping to gain from writing an Industrial PhD?

I’m hoping to identify where and how the dynamics of meaning and polarization unfold in the public debate on urban development. Further to this, my ambition is to clarify how to promote conditions for growth in urban development debate in the future. Personally, I’m hoping to build up research skills during my industrial PhD, so I can continue to contribute to clarifying the relationship between sociality and technology.