“What defines a Rotterdammer?” “...Everything”

As cities have been contemporarily understood to exert power and meaning through branding, cities are represented in various ways—to anyone and everyone—at once. In understanding who (and what) frame and represent the city, it remains integral in referencing the media in being able to depict the city beyond purely physical attributes. Hereby this study redirected the focus of studying cities as a product of social culture. This study explored the mediated representation and framing of the city of Rotterdam, the Netherlands, through two media outlets: Rotterdam Make It Happen and De Oud-Rotterdammer. This study then also referenced residents as relevant but underrepresented local stakeholders—already knowledgeable and familiar with the city and its relevant media representations. The research question that guided this study was: How do Rotterdam Make It Happen and De Oud-Rotterdammer frame the city of Rotterdam and local ‘Rotterdammers,’ and how is this negotiated between elderly residents in the city? Here, the goal was to study both the representation and negotiation of Rotterdam’s city identity amongst the elderly. This was achieved through a mixed-methods approach analyzing both mediated content (in a content analysis) and personal recollections (through interviews). By first understanding which qualities of the city were most frequently portrayed, this helped outline which qualities and places (within the city) were most often represented within the two media outlets. The interviews then helped understand how residents interpreted such mediated messages and derived meaning from it. With longer durations of residence, the elderly participants interviewed in this study gave various insights on the physical, social, and cultural changes they experienced in the city across the years. In the modern day where a city’s power is largely associated with its marketability, this study demonstrated the need to interpret cities as multidimensional, meaningful, and socially constructed. As such, this study illustrates the benefits of including residents more closely in the co-creation of the city’s brand to produce a more accurate representation of the city socio-culturally.