Shifting proximities

Abstract

Perceptions and feelings of belonging and non-belonging, security and insecurity post-9/11 among multi-ethnic news audiences interviewed in Edinburgh are bound up with perceptions of nearness to and remoteness from places, people and threatening events. People's senses of physical, cultural and emotional closeness and distance oscillate as a consequence of different push-and-pull factors encountered in the course of their face-to-face and mediated interactions. National government policy and news media play major roles in constructing senses of closeness or separation. Also significant in the formation of relative senses of proximity are local authorities' responses to diversity, as well as lived experiences. News audience members actively attempt to assert some control over their senses of `belonging-security'.