DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.15108328
title: Coexistence and conflict in the age of complexity (EmergentCommunity)

description: The data addresses the dynamics of coexistence and conflict in increasingly diverse cities from a human-centred perspective. It was collected as part of the EU-funded project Coexistence and Conflict in the Age of Complexity (EmergentCommunity) in nine European cities in Finland, France, and Sweden. The dataset comprises of two parts: EmergentCommunityEthno (qualitative data) and EmergentCommunityVR (quantitative and qualitative data) that were collected during the project. In addition to these, desk research was conducted and these files have been included in the metadata description. 

EmergentCommunityEthno (dataset 1):

Across the nine cities, participants consisted of people above 15-years of age, living in the studied urban neighbourhoods or using their public spaces. In Finland, data were collected in the neighbourhoods of Peltolammi and Multisilta in Tampere, in Malmi in Helsinki, and in Martti and Paavola in Hyvinkää. In Tampere, part of the data (n=31 interviews) was collected in collaboration with the EKOS research project (this part of the data is described and archived in the Finnish Social Science Data Archive, DoI: https://doi.org/10.60686/t-fsd3816). The second part of the data was collected in Sweden. The data collection sites there were the neighborhoods of Möllevången and Nydala in Malmö, Farsta and Rågsved in Stockholm, and Fröslunda and Årby in Eskilstuna. The French data were collected in the La Plaine area in Marseille; in La-Chapelle-Saint-Luc, Saint-Andre-Les-Vergers and Les Chartreux in Troyes; and in Guillotière in Lyon.

Across these sites shared methods were used in data collection, consisting of thematic interviews, walking interviews, and observations. The dataset emphasizes the diversity of experiences and the manifestations of distinctions in diverse urban environments and examines the ways in which people form bonds in relation to each other, their neighborhoods, and the broader society.

The first set of participants were located through social media groups (Facebook), from the premises of associations organizing community activities in the areas, libraries, cafes, community events, and youth centers. After this, snowball sampling was used, in addition to which targeted recruitment was applied if a population group represented in the area was completely missing from the dataset. Ethnographic observations were conducted in public spaces, community centres, cafés, stations, and shopping centres that were selected as potentially interesting places based on extant scholarship on living with difference and urban encounters. Here, attention was paid at how people used these sites, who were there and who were absent, as well as how people moved in and across the sites. Notes were made of what kinds of encounters, patterns of behaviour, cooperations, and conflicts occurred. These observations were made at various times of the day, to capture potential temporal changes. This resulted in a rich collection of fieldnotes, sketches, photographs, and movement maps. 

Relevant files: 1) EmergentCommunity ethnographic matrix.pdf, 2) EmergentCommunityEthno interview questions.docx, 3) EmergentCommunity_metadata public.xlsx (contains all metadata from the project), 4) EmergentCommunityEthno_metadata.csv (contains metadata only on desk research, ethnographic interviews and fieldnotes). 

EmergentCommunityVR (dataset 2):

Data collection was conducted in Helsinki, Marseille, and Malmö. The data was collected using 360-degree videos based on the aforementioned ethnographic data as stimuli to which participants were exposed. A separate video was created for each city, using specifically the data collected therein. We put together a mobile laboratory set-up that travelled to each city and collaborated with local NGOs whose premises were used as our laboratory space. The equipment and software used are explained in the document "EmergentCommunity mobile laboratory.pdf".

The inclusion criteria for participation were: being a major, healthy, not having hearing or vision impairments, being a resident in the city that the video depicted, and knowledge of the local language in which the video was executed. During the viewing of the video stimulus, participants' physiological responses were measured and their eye movements were tracked. VR eye tracking was used as it enables the precise analysis of gaze behaviour – such as fixations and saccades – within immersive, ecologically valid environments. Regarding physiological signals, the focus was on the electrical activity of the heart using electrocardiography (ECG), the electrical activity of the facial muscles using facial electromyography (fEMG), and the electrical conductivity of the skin using galvanic skin response (GSR). To complement the physiological data, a multimodal setup was established to assess the affective content of the stimulus in terms of arousal/valence, avoidance/approach, and unpredictability. After viewing, the participants were asked to evaluate the intensity of their emotional experience and to name the emotional reactions elicited by the video using a questionnaire carried out with Gorilla Experiment Builder. The questionnaire also contained background questions, from basic participant information, such as age and gender, to aspects that relate to diversity and inequality in contemporary societies: language, income, housing, education, political activity, participation, as well as political opinions and social values. After completing the measurements and the questionnaire, participants were interviewed about their experience and the thoughts it provoked, and they were asked to share information regarding their daily lives.

The purpose of the dataset was to help understand the formation of emotional experiences and the significance and functioning of emotions in the everyday life of increasingly diverse and unequal cities. The call for participation was distributed in several thematic Facebook groups (related to e.g., urban development, multiculturalism, neighborhood, local NGOs and minority communities) and via Instagram, as well as through flyers/posters in libraries, local associations, shopping centers, cafes, and on the project's Facebook page and Instagram profile. In the case of Marseille and Malmö, local assistants were used to spread the invitation within their networks and distribute participation invitation leaflets on the streets. In each city, it was possible for already registered participants to invite additional participants as well. Overall, the goal was to ensure the representativeness of the data in terms of age, gender, and minority status. 

Relevant files: 1) EmergentCommunity video stimuli.pdf, 2) EmergentCommunityVR interview questions.pdf, 3) EmergentCommunityVR Gorilla questionnaires.pdf, 4) EmergentCommunity mobile laboratory.pdf, 5) EmergentCommunity_metadata public.xlsx (contains all metadata from the project), 6) EmergentCommunityVR interviews.csv (contains metadata on interviews done after watching the 360-degree video), 7) EmergentCommunityVR physio.csv (contains metadata on physiological measuring and questionnaires). 

Purpose of the data

The EmergentCommunity project aimed at producing knowledge about what community means and how it is formed in increasingly diverse societies, as well as the conflicts and tensions that everyday life brings out. The project empirically examined the concrete challenges that societal changes produce for cities and coexistence. The aim was to identify how peaceful coexistence could be supported and population relations promoted in urban everyday life. The project emphasized that community relations and everyday coexistence are affective, social, and spatial phenomena, which is why a wide range of research methods from ethnography and observation to psychophysiological measurements and interviews were applied. These approaches were brought into dialogue through virtual reality by utilizing ethnography-based 360-degree videos depicting everyday life in the latter part of the project (EmergentCommunityVR). Thus, the project created new understanding of emotions formed in everyday life and produced unique knowledge in the fields of psychological and sociological emotion research. Bringing these areas together enabled a critical examination of the concept of community and the identification of the practices and ways in which communities are produced in the everyday life of diverse and unequal cities (see CORDIS database for public description, results, and reporting).

Throughout the data collection, the research focused on everyday life and the forms, practices, and interpretations of everyday coexistence in public urban spaces in the selected research neighbourhoods. Participants were also asked to share their experiences, interpretations, and views on societal change and how the change has been visible in their own neighborhoods and what thoughts and feelings it evokes in them. The data was formed through non-probability sampling (self-formed sample).

The research sites were selected by examining statistics, policy reports, and available data on demographic changes and diversity, income inequality, trends of residential and ethnic segregation in different countries and cities (desk research). We chose the countries and cities so that they would complement each other and that changes were observable in each selected context, although their forms, emphases, and manifestations might vary. After this extensive background review, we focused on the city level, complementing the available statistical data with news articles and reports and analyses related to urban areas and development. This allowed us to identify pockets of diversity and inequality within each city. Finally, study neighborhoods were selected based on them having undergone urban development projects, being targeted with anti-segregation measures, their residents' socio-economic backgrounds being diverse, and several dimensions of inequality (regarding education level, employment rate, income level) being present in the areas.

The total size of the data

The dataset consists of desk research data made up of 960 files (reports, news articles, anonymized social media discussions), amounting to 4Gb. The data were used to identify the research sites and set the collected data within the broader socio-political context.

EmergentCommunityEthno data consists of 142 recorded interviews with 185 people that amount to 118 hours of talk, and 2214 pages of transcribed material (+ 31 interviews collected with the EKOS project, archived separately in FSD, ). In addition to the interviews, the data includes 338 pages of fieldnotes, 1974 photographs/videos, and 63 sketches/maps. 

EmergentCommunityVR data includes 3 ethnography-based 360-degree video stimuli (length approximately 7:30 minutes/video) and 198 recorded interviews with 200 participants amounting to 116 hours of talk, 2017 pages of transcribed data. The size of the physiological and eye-tracking data is 294 Gb, and ~30Mb for the questionnaire answers; this data was collected from 197 participants.