Communicating the Nation
National Topographies of Global Media Landscapes
The nation is one of the most resilient concepts in our understanding of the world and its societies. Politics, sports and cultural events, in news as well as in fiction, are largely structured by the national logic. Internationalism – be it in representation, production or consumption – does not challenge the privileged position of the nation. Globalising processes do offer an alternative to the primacy of the nation, but have so far been unable to overcome its dominance. The nation’s resilience is, in part, due to its continuing relevance: ontologically, it offers a sense of territorial stability and security while epistemologically it can supply a sense of familiarity and order in the global landscape.
This volume provides cutting edge analysis of old and new architectures of the nation and its mediated presence in everyday life. In an age of alleged globalisation, nations and nation-states have been claimed to be out-dated. However, the proclamation of the end of the nation (-state) has been premature. Eschewing fashionable obituaries for media, geography and the nation, leading media scholars explore the complex ideological and spatial changes in contemporary understandings of the nation. The nation can be seen as a nodal point of media discourse. Hence the power, the politics and the poetics of the nation will be the subject of this book.
Content
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Anna Roosvall, Inka Salovaara-Moring
I. The Making of Nations
Methodological Inter-Nationalism in Comparative Media Research. Flow Studies in International Communication
Terhi Rantanen
The Nation as Media Event
Britta Timm Knudsen
The Mediation of Death and the Imagination of National Community
Lilie Chouliaraki
Between Community and Commodity. Nationalism and Nation Branding
Göran Bolin, Per Ståhlberg
II. Nations and Empires Revisited
The Future is a Foreign Place. Topographies of Post-Communism, Nation and Media
Inka Salovaara-Moring
Imperial Glory is Back? Retelling the Russian National Narrative by Representation and Communication
Ivan Zassoursky
Holy Trinity: Nation Pentagon, Screen
Toby Miller
Vox Americana. Why the Media Forget, and Why it is Important to Remember
Andrew Calabrese
III. National Selves and Others
The National vs. the Global. Producing National History in a Global Television Era
Tamar Ashuri
National Television News of the World. Challenges and Consequences
Kristina Riegert
Image-Nation. The National, the Cultural and the Global in Foreign News Slide-shows
Anna Roosvall
The Disciplined Imaginary. The Nation Rejuvenated for the Global Condition
Anu Kantola
The Authors