Introduction

The main aim of this chapter is to develop methodological and theoretical thinking about how to assess cohesion initiatives in an age of heightened and diverse media communications. It will discuss how the concept of ‘community’ can be socially understood within a global and local social context in which complex communication systems shape its meanings. It will use an illustrative case study, drawing on the methods and findings of a specific research project concerned with aspects of cohesion in a large metropolis – London. The study showed how newspaper representations of asylum constructed images of migration that were differently received by members of communities and how particular groups were vulnerable to the influence of negative press images. The conclusions indicate that any assessment of strategies for increasing cohesion must take into account the ways in which communication flows influence perceptions and attitudes.

Assessment of a social initiative will always depend on adopting a defensible framework of assumptions about its possible impact: using metaphors of ‘healing’, for example, these would include an understanding of the ‘sickness’, the nature of the ‘patient’, the ways in which ‘remedies’ take effect, and of the indicators of improvement. In Chapter Two, the theory of change was seen as a key point of departure for reflections on evaluation. Without a robust and valid set of such assumptions, an evaluation will be little more than a collection of data that readers will have to interpret for themselves. The methods of assessment must be directed by an interpretive framework that tells the researchers where to seek information, how to construct measures and what to make of the responses. In particular, the framework should take account of an initiative's full social context and its meanings to the various publics for which it has importance and relevance.

Critical thinking about ‘community’

The policy agenda associated with community cohesion initiatives has been pragmatic in the sense that it derived its understanding of communities from the experience of overt problems, chiefly manifest through ‘extremism’, disorder and conflict. It then sought to identify the boundaries and constitution of communities that to a lesser or greater degree could be situated near or around the problems. The aim of policy was therefore to effect some kind of reconciliation or healing process that in engaging communities would avert the likelihood of conflict.