Looking back on my initial post, I expected something completely different from what I experienced. My highlight of the trip was interacting with locals, and my academic highlight was learning more about audience members in a community. I have never taken peace studies or sociology classes, so my perspective was ignorant. My mind was set up in a way that focused on theories that would apply to the situation; however, I quickly realized the complexity of understanding the context behind the community’s perspectives. My major is health and strategic communication, so I was thinking logically about how to create a prosocial campaign in these communities. My experiences caused me to step back and change my perspective multiple times. There were times when speakers would give me some context and influence me to pick a side, and then, when another speaker would share their experiences and reasoning for things, it influenced me to switch sides again. By the end of this trip, I realized that it’s not about sides. The point of getting to know these layers in conflict was to see the community as a whole. This trip caused me to look at campaigns in a completely different way that I couldn’t have learned in a traditional classroom. Interacting with locals and being able to ask follow-up questions fostered an environment for deep understanding. During this trip, identity was a crucial reoccurring variable that challenged my knowledge of segmenting audience members by allowing me to see that a community that would initially be seen as a group can be split into different subgroups. A takeaway from this is to remind me always to ask, “Is there a subgroup within?” and “What values, beliefs, and attitudes do they hold that differ from other subgroups that can affect my approach to persuasive messaging?”

This trip also expanded my understanding of what I can do with my future career. Before this trip, I was so focused on improving hospital patient-provider communication that I didn’t realize I had developed this kind of tunnel vision. Everything shifted for me on Day 6, during our first day in Derry/Londonderry. After visiting the Loyalist community and meeting at the Free Derry Museum, I noticed something that both sides brought up: the mental health and suicide rates of youth in the community. Hearing people from opposite backgrounds agree on this issue made it very powerful. At that moment, ideas started running through my head. I began thinking of ways to create health campaigns focused on supporting the youth’s mental health in that community. That’s when it clicked that I don’t have to limit myself to hospitals. There are so many ways I can apply what I’ve learned to help entire communities. This trip helped me see that I can make a bigger impact than I had imagined.

One of the biggest challenges I faced during the trip was distinguishing between the different groups. I often had to refer back to my notes from the first day because I kept confusing terms like Nationalist, Unionist, Loyalist, and Republican. As we heard from more speakers, it became harder to keep the groups straight, especially those that shared similarities in religion or political views. What surprised me most was how some of the speakers identified themselves. I had expected people to express pride in their group identity, but during the peace wall tours, both guides described themselves as “former” members of their respective communities. This made me realize that, for them, these identities were part of a past they had chosen to leave behind, perhaps as a way of moving forward or distancing themselves from the conflict.

This morning, we met with Professor Bill Rolston, who introduced us to the Murals and the Peace Walls by sharing the history and context to understand the complexity behind Northern Ireland and Ireland’s issues today. We later went on a mural and Peace Wall tour. We took a tour with former combatants from each side of the wall, where they had an opportunity to explain their perspective of the conflict. On one side, the former combatant met us on Conor’s Corner. Then, they took us down Shankill Road, where we stopped at different memorial sites as they explained some history behind each place. During the walk, we passed by a building where the Shankill Road bombing took place during the Troubles. I had a moment when I was able to look at the building for a bit, and I noticed a clock on the building. I saw the people around me, and I couldn’t help but reflect that I was standing in the same place where people had felt so much pain, trauma, and suffering, where people at one point in time were screaming, crying, and essentially dying. I was introduced to something new by having that moment of self-reflection that complicated my thinking that “people should just move forward and bring down the peace walls.” These deeply traumatic experiences can’t just be erased. For the first time, I started to understand how moments like those can cause people to feel unsafe living so close to the other group. The trauma they carry is so deep that telling them to “just bring the peace wall down” feels unrealistic and inconsiderate. Seeing firsthand made me realize how experiences like that can shape a person’s life for a long time after the violence has ended, especially if they live within walking distance of the community that was responsible.

The separation of the Protestant and Catholic communities and the walking tours reminded me of Social Identity Theory (SIT). Social identity theory explains that people are motivated to have a positive self-image (Rodriguez, 2024). Creating a positive self-image is influenced by personal and social identity (Rodriguez, 2024). Personal identity refers to individual traits, values, qualities, and choices, such as a personal experience that explains what shaped their belief in their identity (Rodriguez, 2024). An example of personal identity displayed was when one tour guide disclosed why they joined a group at a young age. They mentioned they were thinking that they were “fighting terrorists, not freedom fighters” as a means to maintain that positive self-image and avoid mental discomfort.

In contrast, social identity is an individual’s self-perception of a shared identity with a group or group membership, such as identifying as a Catholic or Protestant. An example of social identity we could observe was the presence of flags. We walked past over a hundred different types of flags in just three hours. The flags had a symbolic meaning that tied them to their identity. One side of Belfast had flags of Britain, Israel, or Ukraine, and the other had Ireland or Palestinian flags. The flags could be seen outside windows, on poles, all over the streets, and on people’s shirts.

During the process of individuals categorizing themselves to perceive themselves in a positive light, they create in-groups and out-groups. For example, the tour guide would identify with whichever group they see in a positive light. Similarly, the flags are a symbolic way of creating pride when people look out and see everyone around them with the same flags, and by displaying one, they identify with that in-group.

Furthermore, the theory claims that when individuals perceive themselves as part of an out-group, they try to find ways to improve their self-image (Rodriguez, 2024). During this process, they engage in one of the three strategies: exit, pass, and voice (Rodriguez, 2024). “Exit” is when people leave that group identity (Rodriguez, 2024). An example was when our first tour guide identified as an ex-Loyalist. This gives us the idea that the person wants to separate themselves from that identity and no longer wishes to be part of that out-group. The second strategy, “pass,” is when people hide their identity to blend in. (Rodriguez, 2024). The same ex-Loyalist also displayed “pass” and downplaying his group identity by not mentioning they were Protestant. He just mentioned that he was an ex-Loyalist, which can be seen as the passing of an ex-Loyalist identity and avoiding religion’s identity’s role in the conflict. The third strategy is “voice,” when people try to elevate and change the group’s meaning (Rodriguez, 2024). We saw this done by both ex-combatants; they conducted educational walks that gave more context to things and acknowledged their traumas and pains so that we could understand their group on a deeper level.

In all, identifying and learning about the layers behind the experiences and lived traumas gives us a better understanding of the complexity behind issues like taking down the peace wall.

Reference:

Rodriguez, J. (2024). Social identity theory. Salem Press Encyclopedia of Health. 

Hello!
My name is Rubi. A fun fact about me is that I have a pet chicken named Cleopatra, but I call her Cleo. I’m a first-year graduate student in the Health and Strategic Communication program. My academic focus is on improving patient-provider communication in healthcare settings. Through my studies in persuasion, health campaigns, communication theories, intercultural, and group communication, I have developed skills in formative research, message framing, and adapting communication strategies for diverse cultural and group settings.
What attracted me to this course was Dr. LaBelle. She mentioned during our class that she would be participating in this course, and it sounded interesting. This opportunity will allow me to apply the skills I’ve gained in a real-world setting and challenge me by using them in other contexts besides health. I’m excited to explore which concepts I apply the most to reach my goal of a deeper understanding of those concepts. I also hope to gain a deeper understanding of the complexities that groups from a different culture face and be able to identify similarities to other conflicts I know of. Some anticipated challenges is terminology. Since I am a health communication major, I know I’ll have to quickly learn terminology and concepts that everyone might already know.

Pet chicken