Graffiti Distribution in Novi Sad: A Comparative Spatial Analysis Using Field Surveys and Google Street View

In South-Eastern and Central Europe, graffiti is a widespread cultural phenomenon. It is often used to express support for football teams, political affiliation and (national) ideology. Currently, research on graffiti in South Eastern Europe mainly focuses on the domains of sociology and cultural studies, with an absence of systematic studies from linguistic and geographic perspectives. An integration of these two perspectives can prove especially helpful for the study of graffiti, which in most cases uses language to shape the space in which they are located. The linguistic subfield of linguistic landscape, within which graffiti is often linguistically studied, presents severe issues, mainly due to a lack of systematic methods. Interdisciplinary work combining linguistic and geographic methods is needed in order to improve the scientific quality of linguistic landscape research. Hence, this study aims to adopt a linguistic and geographic perspective, utilizing a combination of field surveys and Google Street View crawling methods to gather graffiti data in the city of Novi Sad, Serbia. Subsequently, an analysis of the spatial distribution patterns and linguistic content of graffiti is conducted to explore whether Novi Sad's graffiti distribution exhibits specific spatial characteristics and whether there are spatial connections among graffiti contents. Through the linguistic and geographic examination of graffiti in Novi Sad, this research not only explores spatial distribution patterns but also delves deeper into the national ideologies of the Serbian population and the identity affiliations across different urban districts.