Research Workshop: The Cost of Flying the Flag

Fellows Room, Mitchell Institute, 18 University Square, Belfast

Speaker: Professor Declan French, QUB

Chair: Professor Kieran McEvoy (QUB)

RESEARCH WORKSHOP

This interdisciplinary project with B.Quinn (QBS/UU) and D.Bryan (SHAPP) will provide data on the symbolic landscape – flags and murals – in Northern Ireland, collected using Google Maps, to a level and detail that has never been attained before. Our programme of research is to provide a cultural interpretation of the nature of public expressions of cultural identity in Northern Ireland (NI) and to determine whether there are welfare costs to these displays in terms of house prices and mental health.

Public spaces in NI are often demarcated with flags, murals and symbols to express political allegiances. These often include displays by Proscribed (Terrorist) organisations and surveys consistently show that people feel intimidated. We will process images of cultural displays by applying computer vision (CV) and machine learning (ML) techniques to street view imagery. We will access images from GoogleStreet View (GSV) collecting panoramas at 25m intervals along the street network with images for each panorama at 6 different camera rotations. Object detection will be performed using the latest state of the art large multi-modal models to identify flags. We will also explore using CV to differentiate types of flags and to identify other cultural markers such as painted kerbs, murals, graffiti keywords and paramilitary memorials in images.

We know from previous ethnographic work that meanings attached to flags and murals can be diverse, multi-vocal and shift over time. In our first study, the interpretation of these displays will be based on previous ethnographic data, the annual NI Life and Times survey, qualitative interpretation, emic categorisation, and theoretical models of symbols and public space. Cultural identifiers may negatively affect house prices. In hedonic models, house prices are determined by property characteristics as well as the neighbourhood or environment within which it exists. The effects of displays on asking house price data will be tested within a hedonic model in our second study. Segregated areas are associated with less social cohesion; less residential stability and higher rates of crime and antisocial behaviour. We will determine whether cultural displays worsen individual mental health in our final study.

The only similar work to this work is a 2006-2009 census of flags along the main NI arterial routes carried out by a team of researchers manually counting flags and emblems in the field. The research data was limited to main roads and was unable to capture housing estates. A comprehensive and sufficiently up-to-date account of the diverse topography of visual displays in modern-day NI does not exist.

The project aligns with the work of the Mitchell Institute in supporting peacebuilding through the mutual recognition of the validity of cultural expression in a respectful and agreed form. The 1998 Belfast/Good Friday Agreement recognised ‘the sensitivity in the use of symbols and the need … to ensure that such symbols and emblems are used in a manner which promotes mutual respect rather than division.’ Through the peace process, policies encouraging ‘shared space’ show evidence of success in town centres but in residential areas and rural towns displays of flags maintain ethno-national territorial division.

Professor Kieran McEvoy is the Senator George J. Mitchell Chair in Peace, Security and Justice at the Mitchell Institute and a Professor of Law and Transitional Justice. He is currently a Leverhulme Major Research Fellow (September 2023-Sept 2026) working on the role of apologies and acknowledgement in addressing past violence and human rights abuses.

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