Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses visual and textual representations of co-living of human and wild animals in urban environments, published in web media. The main questions are: How are urban nature and its habitants conceptualized? What kinds of animals are welcomed in the urban areas and what are not?

Paper long abstract:

Typically, cities and other urban areas are understood as human environments, although more and more wild animal species have accustomed themselves to human presence and started to live in urban environments. Thus, cities may be seen as multispecies settings, in which the boundaries of nature and culture often disappear. Even though the encounters with urban wild animals are usually short, their significance is shown in the fact that they are often reported in the social media, and the antics of non-human animals rather regularly also make to headlines, especially if their actions are somehow exceptional from the human point of view. In this paper, I will discuss visual and textual representations of co-living of human and wild animals in urban environments. My main questions are: How are urban nature and its habitants conceptualized? What kinds of animals are welcomed in the urban areas and what are not? As research materials, I use Twitter posts and their comments, published in Finnish Twitter, that describe encounters with urban animals. In addition, I discuss news and comments related to urban animals published in two news websites: the most widely circulated newspaper in Finland, Helsingin Sanomat, and the Finnish National Broadcasting Company YLE. The materials are analysed through theoretically informed content analysis. I interpret the visual and textual representations of urban animals as interspecies articulation, a concept suggested by Pauliina Rautio, as trying to seek ways of co-existing with our nonhuman environment. This discussion is urgently needed in the current situation of changing environments.