Analysing thematic continuities and discontinuities in European Capital of Culture videos

The title European Capital of Culture (ECoC) represents an opportunity for cities to enhance their brand image in the eyes of their own inhabitants and the whole of Europe alike; in addition, from a socio-economic standpoint, the title is a catalyst for the city's cultural development and urban revitalization as well as a boost for tourism. For this reason, it is important for cities aspiring to the ECoC title to make sure that their place identity is well-formulated in all their ECoC-related materials and in line with the expectations of ECoC calls. This article will thus explore place identity and the related concept of place branding in relation to 60 videos marketing and communicating 35 ECoCs in the 2007-2025 time period. In particular, by combining genre analysis and corpus-based Critical Multimodal Discourse Analysis it looks at the thematics enacted in the videos and the forms and strategies of place branding they use. The analysis shows that, while some thematics are common to many videos (e.g. the city, local cultural heritage and performing arts), others are rarer or related to the ECoC leitmotiv (e.g. borders and crossing borders in the case of the videos promoting Nova Gorica and Gorizia). The results seem to suggest that the ECoC event represents an opportunity for the designated cities to showcase themselves as well as their cultural heritage.