Cool Nations: Media and the Social Imaginary of the Branded Country
Abstract
Nation branding is the most recent feature of imagined nation-making in the history of nations. Facing global competition, national decision-makers aim to distinguish their countries from others by means of branding. Quite a few nations have considered the term 'cool' suitable for describing some essence of their country's brand. Cool Nations. Media and the Social Imaginary of the Branded Country traces the mediated ways in which the transnational idea of "cool" has circulated from popular culture, fashion, and marketing into describing nations. The book explores the commodification of the nation, the shift to a promotional political culture, and the role of media in contributing to the circulation of the idea of the Cool Nation. The social imaginary of nation branding takes its theory and practices from marketing, unlike earlier imaginations based on ideas of democracy or citizenship. Cool Nations argues that "cool" is one of the vehicles through which the commodification of nations takes place.
... Others (e.g. Clerc, Glover, and Jordan 2015) have insisted on the necessity of looking at nation branding in historical depth and as the 'domestication' of global trends in national contexts (Valaskivi 2016a(Valaskivi , 2016bAlasuutari and Qadir 2013). For both authors, local efforts at nation branding would be best understood in the continuity of past practices as '. . . ...
... The audiences aimed at by these efforts were still rather narrowly defined as influential (elites) or potentially influential (the youth). Documents reminded the reader of the importance of Finland's public diplomacy in developing its public image abroad but also in influencing what foreign leaders thought of Finland (Valaskivi 2016a(Valaskivi , 2016b. If one compares these reports with the British Foreign Office 1999 Foresight report (cf. ...
... Stubb, whose entire public and political personality was built around a business-friendly, neoliberal, modern, and international image, was obviously the perfect candidate to pick up branding as a way to organise Finland's image policy: his ideas of cooperation with the private sector and an obvious taste for the vocabulary and methods of business certainly pushed him to turn to branding as a set of practices and a legitimisation discourse for official efforts towards developing a coordinated image of Finland abroad. The years 2007-2008 can thus be seen as an evolution in tone, methods, and organisational framework relabelling Finland's image policy (Valaskivi 2016a(Valaskivi , 2016b. 'Branding' was understood as boiling down Finland's image to a few core notions suitable to be presented and efficiently 'sold' through public relations channelsand to be embraced by the population. ...
This joint article starts with Finland’s nation branding to look at image-building activities as context and path-dependent activities. The main empirical example will be Finland’s image-building efforts between 1988 and 2011. Despite changes in tone and methods, the 2011 Mission for Finland-report on the nation’s brand and the 1990 Kantine-report were both parts of a continuum in Finland’s image policy practices. In an effort to contribute to studies drawing historical comparisons between image crafting policies, we would like to suggest that different contexts in fact produced different patterns of the same phenomenon, different expressions of the same urge to present Finland to the world for what was perceived as pressing political, economic, and identity-based reasons. On this basis, our article suggests a series of variables with which to organise differences and similarities between the development of Finland’s 1980s–1990s public diplomacy and its 2008–2011 branding committee and following campaign.
... A few initial cases of critical nation branding research (e.g. Aronczyk, 2008;Bolin, 2002;Jansen, 2008;Marat, 2009;Volcic, 2008) were followed by growing scholar- ship in monograph form (Aronczyk, 2013;Jordan, 2014b;Saunders, 2017;Surowiec, 2016;Valaskivi, 2016), in edited collections (Kaneva, 2012;Volcic and Andrejevic, 2015) and in numerous journal articles and book chapters (e.g. Graan, 2013;Jordan, 2014a;Kaneva and Popescu, 2011;Miazhevich, 2012;Panagiotopoulou, 2012;Varga, 2013). ...
... This power to produce images of social reality has been taken advantage of for construct- ing the social imaginaries (Taylor, 2002) of nations, both by nationalist movements lead- ing up to the formation of the modern nation states over the past couple of centuries and, more lately, by PR consultants and marketing agents in nation branding projects (cf. Valaskivi, 2016). This deserves a critical understanding for which the apparatus of criti- cal media and cultural studies might provide important openings. ...
... Sue Curry Jansen, for exam- ple, has argued that the 'primary audiences (customers or consumers) targeted by nation branders are international tourists, foreign investors, and potential trading partners, as well as the citizens of the branded country' (Jansen, 2012: 79, emphasis added). In this description, governments seemingly have dual aims, trying to address an external inter- national audience of investors and tourists and a domestic audience of citizens at the same time (see also Kania-Lundholm, 2016;Valaskivi, 2016). ...
Following the spread of digital media, the interdisciplinary field of surveillance studies has gained prominence, engaging scholars from the humanities and the social sciences alike. This introductory article aims to map out the main terrain of surveillance through, by and in the media. First, we discuss the phenomenon of, and the scholarly work on, surveillance through and by media, taking into consideration both state and corporate surveillance and how these activities have grown with the new digital and personal media of today. We then discuss surveillance as the phenomenon is represented in the media and how representations relate to surveillance practices. We conclude by presenting the articles of this special issue.
... A few initial cases of critical nation branding research (e.g. Aronczyk, 2008;Bolin, 2002;Jansen, 2008;Marat, 2009;Volcic, 2008) were followed by growing scholarship in monograph form (Aronczyk, 2013;Jordan, 2014b;Saunders, 2017;Surowiec, 2016;Valaskivi, 2016), in edited collections (Kaneva, 2012;Volcic and Andrejevic, 2015) and in numerous journal articles and book chapters (e.g. Graan, 2013;Jordan, 2014a;Kaneva and Popescu, 2011;Miazhevich, 2012;Panagiotopoulou, 2012;Varga, 2013). ...
... This power to produce images of social reality has been taken advantage of for constructing the social imaginaries (Taylor, 2002) of nations, both by nationalist movements leading up to the formation of the modern nation states over the past couple of centuries and, more lately, by PR consultants and marketing agents in nation branding projects (cf. Valaskivi, 2016). This deserves a critical understanding for which the apparatus of critical media and cultural studies might provide important openings. ...
... Sue Curry Jansen, for example, has argued that the 'primary audiences (customers or consumers) targeted by nation branders are international tourists, foreign investors, and potential trading partners, as well as the citizens of the branded country' (Jansen, 2012: 79, emphasis added). In this description, governments seemingly have dual aims, trying to address an external international audience of investors and tourists and a domestic audience of citizens at the same time (see also Kania-Lundholm, 2016;Valaskivi, 2016). ...
Since the late 1990s, nation branding has attracted a lot of attention from academics, professional consultants and government actors. The ideas and practices of nation branding are frequently presented by branding advocates as necessary and even inevitable in the light of changing dynamics of political power and influence in a globalised and media-saturated world. In this context, some have argued that nation branding is a way to reduce international conflict and supplant ethno-nationalism with a new form of market-based, national image management. However, a growing body of critical studies has documented that branding campaigns tend to produce ahistorical and exclusionary representations of the nation and advance a form of ‘commercial nationalism’ that is problematic. Importantly, the critical scholarship on nation branding has relied primarily on sociological and anthropological theories of nationhood, identities and markets. By contrast, the role of the media – as institutions, systems and societal storytellers – has been undertheorised in relation to nation branding. The majority of the existing literature tends to treat the media as ‘neutral’ vehicles for the delivery of branding messages to various audiences. This is the guest editors’ introduction to the Special Issue ‘Theorizing Media in Nation Branding’, which seeks to problematise this overly simplistic view of ‘the media’ and aims to articulate the various ways in which specific media are an integral part of nation branding. It adopts an interdisciplinary approach and problematises both the enabling and the inhibiting potentialities of different types of media as they perpetuate nation branding ideas, images, ideologies, discourses and practices.
... Branding is presented as a means for creating a competitive edge in the global competition. The rise of promotional practices, particularly branding, has been connected with the growing sense of competition not only among nations but also in the growing complexity of the media environment (Valaskivi, 2016). ...
... Inspired by Bourdieu (e.g. 2005), this gives rise to what I have chosen to call the 'promotional field' (see Valaskivi, 2016). The logic of promotion suggests that competitiveness and soft power can be increased through developing the image. ...
... This council published its report Mission for Finland in 2010. (For details, see Valaskivi, 2016). ...
Nation branding is a contemporary, transnationally circulating practice, the most recent feature of imagined nation-making in the global history of nations. While earlier imaginations of nationhood rooted their ideas and philosophy in core political concepts, such as citizenship, national sovereignty and democracy, the social imaginary of nation branding takes its theory and practices from marketing. The paradox of nation branding is that it is a method of distinction adopted by nations because other nations have done it. As a practice, nation branding is thus a circulating fashion of governance, a performance necessary for modern nations to adopt to maintain their status as competitive states in the global economic competition. The paper compares the nation-branding strategy documents of Finland and Sweden (2005–2013). The strategies of the two countries bear a remarkable resemblance to one another. Some of the similarities can be explained by their close cultural proximity. Nevertheless, comparison exemplifies how the global fashion of nation branding becomes a localized performance which requires the pretence that the process is unique within each nation. In other words, the imagined community of the nation and the legitimacy of branding are sustained through the belief that while everybody else is also branding their nation, ‘our’ brand is uniquely authentic.
... ganar las mentes y los corazones de la sociedad civil, y de esta forma lograr que las políticas gubernamentales en el escenario internacional sean admiradas o por lo menos aceptadas y toleradas. Como se mencionaba anteriormente, la iniciativa de la diplomacia pública suele estar en manos de las instituciones gubernamentales, pero en la práctica es ejercida por la clase promocional internacional (TPC), es decir, actores de diversos ámbitos con intereses personales que suelen pertenecer a la elite cosmopolita de la nación (Valaskivi, 2016). La diplomacia pública como forma de circulación de los bienes culturales suele ser analizada en función de sus objetivos políticos u económicos, donde las instituciones y los métodos de promoción suelen diferir en función de la meta propuesta. ...
... En segunda instancia, los bienes escogidos deben ser aprehendidos por la sociedad doméstica, comprometiendo a la población con los elementos representantes de la marca nacional. Finalmente, diversas herramientas del marketing y publicidad deben ser aplicadas con el objetivo de buscar reconocimiento o competitividad en el mercado internacional (Valaskivi, 2016). 4 Consideraciones para un plan de promoción nacional: Diferencias culturales, diplomacia de nicho y modelo de red A pesar de las diversas recetas teóricas para la ejecución de la diplomacia pública y las iniciativas de marca país, la especificidad del consumo y la circulación de bienes culturales argentinos en China nos permite un análisis detallado sobre consideraciones especiales de nuestro caso. ...
Resumen
Los bienes culturales son la base inmaterial de nuestra sociedad, cuyos elementos representan los valores, las costumbres y el devenir histórico de la nación. En la actualidad, las formas simbólicas de la cultura se han convertido en productos intercambiables con un valor estratégico desde el punto de vista político y económico. Teniendo en cuenta el creciente peso de las relaciones y los intercambios con la República Popular China, este artículo intenta contribuir al debate sobre el consumo y la circulación de los bienes culturales argentinos, con el fin de proveer nuevas perspectivas y visibilizar un campo de estudios parcialmente ignorado por los académicos de nuestro país. Partiendo de un análisis bibliográfico que aborda conceptualizaciones de la sociología, la diplomacia pública y los estudios de marca país, este artículo evalúa las bases para el intercambio cultural sino-latinoamericano, la moderna sociedad de consumo en China y los procesos de circulación exterior para la promoción de bienes culturales argentinos. Además, se plantean algunas perspectivas para pensar un plan nacional de promoción, considerando las diferencias culturales entre ambas sociedades, la identificación y la selección estratégica de productos simbólicos para su circulación y el apoyo de los actores no-gubernamentales.
... Although Brazil has long strived to project positive images, and it is recognized as a cool nation (Valaskivi, 2016;Neild, 2017), surveys show that the country is perceived as "decorative" and has become associated with stereotypes not generally applied to responsible countries (Mariutti;Giraldi, 2012;Buarque, 2009Buarque, , 2013Buarque, , 2015Buarque, , 2019. One problem with these stereotypical images of the country is that the external perceptions are that Brazil is synonymous "only" with fun and leisure. ...
... One problem with these stereotypical images of the country is that the external perceptions are that Brazil is synonymous "only" with fun and leisure. Although this is accepted as the brand of a "cool" nation, which could have the potential to position a state within the framework of modern Westernized civilization (Valaskivi, 2016), in the case of Brazil, it seems to work in a different direction. Being perceived as the country of fun, parties and carnival means not being the country of anything else. ...
Brazil is an emerging country with tremendous potential and the ambition to become a major player in global politics. Achieving high international status, however, depends not only on aspiration, but on the intersubjective perceptions of states that are already established as great powers. Brazil’s rise is connected not only to its attributes of power but to how the country is perceived by others. This article advances the study of Brazil’s status by analyzing the image of the country according to the perceptions of the foreign policy community of the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. It contributes to International Relations scholarship by addressing the relation between images of a nation and its level of prestige. The article argues that knowledge about Brazil is limited even among global elites and is mostly associated with superficial stereotypes.
... The international reputation, images and status of Brazil have been the focus of many different studies with a varied methodological and theoretical frameworks, from public diplomacy (Anholt 2016;de Carvalho 2020;Mariutti et al. 2017;Mariutti and Tench 2016), international business and nation branding studies (Anholt 2007;Mariutti and Giraldi 2012;Mariutti and Tench 2016;Lourenção et al. 2019), tourism (Bignami 2002;Kajihara 2010;Oliveira and Martins 2009), media (Jiménez-Martínez 2017Anholt 2009;Buarque 2015;Valaskivi 2016) and other disciplines. This varied plethora of studies have characterized the country's external perception as ambivalent. ...
... Even when the country has historically been perceived with positive images, it has traditionally been associated throughout the globe with stereotypes related to the idea of frivolity, and has been described as a decorative nation. It has the reputation of being a great place to travel for tourism, for beaches and parties, but not a preferred destination for business or an essential participant in global politics (Neild 2017;Valaskivi 2016;Buarque 2015Buarque , 2018Buarque , 2019Bignami 2002;Kajihara 2010;Ribeiro 1995;Anholt 2016). In short, surveys conducted in dozens of countries seem to confirm the very popular adage that Brazil is not perceived as a serious country (Buarque 2018(Buarque , 2019(Buarque , 2022. ...
Global opinion surveys show that Brazil is not perceived by the world as a serious country. Going beyond general views about the nation, this paper analyses intersubjective perceptions of the foreign policy community of great powers to understand whether Brazil is recognised as a serious player in world politics. These intersubjective views are important because they can determine the international prestige of a nation. Using a theoretical framework of status in international relations and based on reflexive thematic analysis of primary data from elite interviews, this paper discusses how serious Brazil is perceived to be by powerful states. It argues that while there is not a consensus over the reputation of the country, Brazil tends to be taken seriously as long as it plays into great powers’ interests. Furthermore, it builds on the case of Brazil to discuss the use of the concept of seriousness in international relations and develop hypotheses about its meaning.
... But the PR-isation of politics, allied with the renewal of nationalism in many parts of the world, has led governments to be the main actors of national promotion, with campaigns that seek to discipline and transform citizens within the nation-state to better sell it outside (Volcic & Andrejevic, 2016) to global audiences. Nation branding has now obtained muchdeserved recognition as a legitimate field of study in media and communication studies, as well as social theory (Aronczyk, 2013a;Valaskivi, 2016;Volcic & Andrejevic, 2011;Weidner, 2015). Yet it has been relatively ignored by political scientists and IR scholars (except for Van Ham, 2001;Browning, 2015), despite the significant implications it bears for theoreticians of International Relations (IR) as the construction of national identities and international recognition through market-based methods and criteria challenges existing conceptions of political entities and political action. ...
... For nations whose national images have been associated with decades of communist authoritarianism or economic protectionism, nation branding aims to "render [these countries] suitable for global consumption" (Kaneva & Popescu, 2011, p. 201). Requisitioning citizens as embodiments of the nation brand and bearers of subjective attributes deemed attractive to global capitalism has been a trend in countries such as the Philippines, Sweden, Finland and China (Guevarra, 2014;Valaskivi, 2016;De Kloet, Pak, & Landsberger, 2011;Pak, 2017). Anholt (2007) advocated that promotional politics respond to entrepreneurial state behaviour. ...
This article highlights key questions raised by the growing concern for global competitiveness and promotional politics in contemporary Asia. Global politics is increasingly governed by promotional imperatives and in the last two decades it has become a common practice for governments to engage in nation branding. Asian states have been particularly eager to implement such promotional strategies, as their rapid development in the last decades has increased their international presence and the overseas expansion of their national corporations. Why and how do Asian states promote themselves? Where and how do promotional imperatives interact with traditional state policies? How are national identities produced, reproduced and challenged through promotional practices in Asia? This article introduces a series of three articles that underline the significance of these policies with regard to renewed, market-based forms of nationalism in the region. It highlights the way questions of image projection within a global capitalist order are becoming crucial for major emerging Asian economies such as China as they integrate and seek to reshape the global political economy. Finally, it considers how, in several regimes in the region, nation branding and the necessities of image projection serve as powerful governance tools to recreate apolitical versions of national identities that serve domestic political purposes.
... Frank (2000) has even suggested that in the Nordic countries the entire population becomes a study cohort. States have also become increasingly aware and concerned about their international image as progressive and competitive, leading many to adopt nation branding strategies to gain visibility (Aronczyk, 2013;Jaffe and Nebenzahl, 2006;Valaskivi, 2016;Volcic and Andrejevic, 2016). Tupasela (2017) has argued that in many such countries, populations become a "brand" that can be marketed on international research markets, while others have suggested that the Nordic countries can be considered a "gold mine" or "Eldorado" (Kongsholm et al., 2018;Ros en, 2001). ...
... As one such report noted, the Nordic countries could be seen as a "Global Health Experimentarium" (Nordic Council of Ministers, 2018), where attempts could be made to generate new forms of value from existing resources. This type of thinking was coupled with seeking to brand the Nordic countries as a unique place where research and innovation could take place (ScienceNordic, 2011;Valaskivi, 2016). The main challenge, however, was how to coordinate and facilitate the use of data from all the Nordic countries, which despite similar histories and political agendas of developing welfare systems had their own legal and administrative systems through which researchers had to go through in order to get access to population data. ...
The Nordic countries aim to have a unique place within the European and global health data economy. They have extensive nationally maintained and centralized health data records, as well as numerous biobanks where data from individuals can be connected based on personal identification numbers. Much of this phenomenon can be attributed to the emergence and development of the Nordic welfare state, where Nordic countries sought to systematically collect large amounts of population data to guide decision making and improve the health and living conditions of the population. Recently, however, the so-called Nordic gold mine of data is being re-imagined in a wholly other context, where data and its ever-increasing logic of accumulation is seen as a driver for economic growth and private business development. This article explores the development of policies and strategies for health data economy in Denmark and Finland. We ask how nation states try to adjust and benefit from new pressures and opportunities to utilize their data resources in data markets. This raises questions of social sustainability in terms of states being producers, providers, and consumers of data. The data imaginaries related to emerging health data markets also provide insight into how a broad range of different data sources, ranging from hospital records and pharmacy prescriptions to biobank sample data, are brought together to enable “full-scale utilization” of health and welfare data.
... Importantly, in order for the trap of representations to work, the nation must recognize itself in its national brand at the same time as it seeks recognition by others. Katja Valaskivi (2016) documents that such recognition depends on a carefully manufactured authenticity, presumably rooted in national values and characteristics (Ch. 4). ...
... Indeed, consultants are quick to settle the score regarding the issue of who is responsible for the success or failure of national brands. The responsibility remains squarely with the locals -including both governing elites and populations at large -who are invited to 'live the brand' in various ways (Aronczyk, 2008;Christensen, 2013;Valaskivi, 2016). National governments, in particular, are exhorted by consultants to get used to their new role of 'brand managers', in charge of managing their nations' reputations. ...
This article outlines a new perspective on the role of media in nation branding, drawing on Jean Baudrillard’s post-structuralist media theory. I argue that, following Baudrillard, we can see nation brands in a new light, namely, as simulacra which exist within a transnational media system for the creation, circulation and consumption of commodity-signs. In this capacity, nation brands shed their representational burden of standing in for the nation and, instead, operate as self-referential entities. I use the example of Brand Kosovo to provide illustrations for my theoretical points. However, while the case of Kosovo has its specificities, I propose that the theoretical claims presented here hold beyond its parameters. This article forms part of the Theorizing Media in Nation Branding Special Issue.
... Besides altering the understanding and meaning of nationhood, nation branding also indicates a changing role and ethos of the state. By transferring the market logic into political and cultural realm of the state, nation branding is argued to enforce the culture of the 'enterprise-state' (Bolin and Ståhlberg, 2010;Graan, 2013;Valaskivi, 2016;Volcic and Andrejevic, 2011) and 'an ethos within which states are no longer competing over territory and power but over investment and market share' (Browning, 2015: 200). This view also relates to the concept of the 'competitive state' (Cerny, 2010), which characterises the changing rationality of the state under conditions of global capitalism and neoliberal governance. ...
... Yet, as some authors claim, nation branding may also function as a re-nationalising mechanism. For instance, by raising national self-esteem and appealing to national pride, states may enhance rather than threaten the sense of ontological security among their citizens through nation-branding efforts (Browning, 2015;Valaskivi, 2016). Likewise, by apparently strengthening national identification among citizens, nation branding is claimed to '(re)legitimise the nation-state as an anchoring point for identity in a globalised world' (Varga, 2013: 826;cf. ...
In this article, we examine the reconstruction and commodification of the national space through digital technologies by using the case of Estonian e-residency. E-residency or ‘virtual residency’ is an initiative of the Estonian government which gives foreigners global access to Estonian e-services via state-issued digital identity. We explore the ways in which the ideas of the ‘virtual state’ and ‘virtual residency’ have been employed for purposes of nation branding and national reputation management, and how the different logics of nation branding and nation building combined in the concept of e-residency have been negotiated in the national context. The study draws on a qualitative textual analysis of the official website of e-residency directed at foreign audiences and the national media coverage of the project addressing domestic publics. The analysis indicates that while the imagery constructed around the notions of the ‘virtual state’ and ‘virtual residency’ makes it possible to turn the national space into a commodity, presented outwards as a globally extensible and open transnational space, domestically it makes it possible to appeal to ‘intact national space’ and to legitimise e-residency as a ‘socio-culturally safe’, digitally mediated internationalisation of the society. This article forms part of the Theorizing Media in Nation Branding Special Issue.
... Finlandiya kamu diplomasisine ilişkin mevcut akademik çalışmalar, Soğuk Savaş dönemi uygulamalarına odaklanan tarihsel incelemeler (Clerc, 2014(Clerc, , 2015(Clerc, , 2016(Clerc, ve 2023Clerc ve Valaskivi, 2018), belirli bir ülkeye yönelik Fin kamu diplomasisi faaliyetlerini analiz eden çalışmalar (Anisimovych-Shevchuk ve Troian, 2022;Ipatti, 2016) ve ulus markalaşmasına odaklanan yapıtlarla (Valaskivi, 2016(Valaskivi, , 2016b sınırlıdır. Bu makale ise Finlandiya kamu diplomasisinin hem tarihsel gelişimini hem de güncel uygulamalarını bütünlüklü ve kuramsal bir perspektifle analiz ederek mevcut akademik yazına şu üç katkıyı yapmayı amaçlamaktadır: Birincisi, Finlandiya kamu diplomasisini detaylı bir şekilde inceleyerek, Finlandiya'nın Soğuk Savaş dönemi yaklaşımı ile Soğuk Savaş sonrası dönemdeki uygulamalarını karşılaştırma imkânı sunmaktadır. ...
Uluslararası ilişkilerde “küçük ülke” olarak sınıflandırılan Finlandiya, eğitim, yönetişim, cinsiyet eşitliği ve yaşam kalitesi konularındaki başarılarıyla uluslararası politikada iyi bir itibara sahiptir. Bu olumlu uluslararası imaj, Finlandiya hükümetlerinin 1945 sonrası dönemde yürüttüğü aktif ve bilinçli uluslararası iletişim politikalarının bir ürünüdür. Bu makale, İkinci Dünya Savaşı sonrasındaki dönemde Finlandiya’nın kamu diplomasisi uygulamalarını incelemektedir. Makale, kamu diplomasisi ve ulus markalaşması faaliyetleriyle ilgili Finlandiya’daki politika yapım süreçlerini tarihsel ve politik bağlam içinde analiz etmeyi amaçlamaktadır. Bu hedef doğrultusunda, Finlandiya’nın kamu diplomasisi etkinliklerini değerlendirmek için “bilgi temelli kamu diplomasisi” ve “ilişkisel kamu diplomasisi” sınıflandırmasına başvurmaktadır. Uluslararası siyasi ortamın Finlandiya’nın uluslararası iletişim yönetimi üzerindeki etkisini vurgulayan makale, Soğuk Savaş döneminde Finlandiya’nın kamu diplomasisi faaliyetlerinin, tek yönlü mesaj iletimine vurgu yapılması nedeniyle bilgi temelli kamu diplomasisi perspektifini yansıttığını savunmaktadır. Makale ayrıca 2000’li yıllardaki girişimlerde, ilişkisel kamu diplomasisinin etkisinin sınırlı kaldığı ve kamu diplomasisinin ulus markalaşmasına indirgenmesi nedeniyle bilgi temelli yaklaşımın etkisinin güçlü şekilde devam ettiği sonucuna varmıştır.
... A growing body of critical literature problematizes the impact of brand ideologies and commercialisation on national democratic governance and national identities (e.g., Aronczyk, 2013;Kaneva, 2011;Surowiec, 2017;Valaskivi, 2016). This study builds on this literature, but it examines how the same brand ideologies can permeate efforts to destabilise and dismantle the national. ...
This study presents a critical discourse analysis of two ideological challengers to the nation‐state: (1) Islamic State, which declared a Caliphate in 2014, and (2) the Good Country, a virtual state founded in 2018. While rooted in dramatically different ideologies, both projects explicitly reject nationalism and rely on media and promotional discourses to build support for their post‐national utopias. The study addresses three research questions: (1) How does each project challenge nationalism and the nation‐state? (2) What alternative utopia does each articulate? (3) How does promotional discourse shape their respective challenges and utopias? The analysis finds significant differences in the challenges, but also important similarities in the utopias, namely, (1) a multi‐cultural, multi‐ethnic, multi‐racial vision of post‐national collectivities; (2) a devaluing of the importance of bounded territorial sovereignty; and (3) an emphasis on individualization and taking personal action to ‘opt into’ a post‐national state based on shared values.
... Castile (1996: 743) citira Wallerstina, ki pravi, da je že sam zgodovinski razvoj kapitalizma vključeval procese komodificiranja »vsega«, kar je vključevalo tudi formiranje trga za etnonacionalne identitete. Valaskivi (2016) v tem oziru uvaja koncept »cool nacij«, da bi opisala vlogo medijev pri družbenem imaginiranju oznamčenih držav v kapitalističnih družbah, kjer je »biti cool« centralnega pomena. ...
Povzetek. Članek analizira reprezentacije Melanie Trump v slovenskih tiskanih medijih in raziskuje, kako je bil v prispevkih o Melanii Trump konstruiran spontani nacionalizem, ta pa je bil v medijih povezan s promocijo slovenske nacije prek Melanie kot blagovne znamke. Moč nacionalnih vezi, idej in tradicije je namreč vzdrževana in redistribuirana prek medijev in popularne kulture, zato avtorja v nasprotju z literaturo s tega področja, ki medije večinoma obravnava le kot mediatorje, v članku tudi kritično naslavljata vprašanje vloge medijev v procesu znamčenja nacije in jih obravnavata kot neodvisne akterje. Avtorja analizirata 594 prispevkov o Melanii Trump, objavljenih v slovenskih tiskanih medijih v obdobju treh mesecev v letih 2016 in 2017. Analiza tiskanih medijev v Sloveniji je pokazala, da številne in ponavljajoče se medijske reprezentacije »Melanie« potiskajo slovenski nacionalizem v komercialni kontekst in posledično transformirajo nacijo v blago. Ključni pojmi: medijski diskurz, komodifikacija, Melania Trump, prva dama, nacionalizem, znamčenje nacije
... Nacije kot komercialna podjetja in poblagovljenje nacionalnih čustev procese komodificiranja »vsega«, kar je vključevalo tudi formiranje trga za etnonacionalne identitete. Valaskivi (2016) v tem oziru uvaja koncept »cool nacij«, da bi opisala vlogo medijev pri družbenem imaginiranju oznamčenih držav v kapitalističnih družbah, kjer je »biti cool« centralnega pomena. ...
Nativism does not only present a concept, but also an ideological framework as well as a political practice related to identity politics. In the article we firstly present the theoretical reflection of nativism and operationalise the most important terms and characteristics of this phenomenon. Later, we apply the concept of nativism to the analysis of conservative populist and/or nativist political actors in the Central European region. The analysis shows how nativism, as a relatively peripheral issue in the first 10–15 years after the democratic transition, became stronger in the next period characterised by a set of crises after 2008. The analysis demonstrates how the mainstream parties in Central Europe adopted the nativist and conservative populist agenda and implemented it into mainstream politics. Furthermore, the analysis shows how Central European nativism correlates with the long-term existence of antiliberal streams that were revitalised after the fall of Communist regimes. These anti-modern societal groups were reformulated as the counter-cosmopolitan camp within the polarisation process that is clearly visible in the political arena. Keywords: nativism; national conservatism; identity politics; Central Europe
... They write: "It may be all but impossible to distinguish deterritoriazation from reterritorialization, since they are mutually enmeshed, or like opposite faces of one and the same process" (1983, p. 258). While Cool Japan, and the state's drive to reinvigorate the "national," has been well attended to by other scholars (see, e.g., Iwabuchi, 2015;Yano, 2015;Valaskivi, 2016;McLelland, 2017), in this case, I work to show how such reterritorialization-consolidating national identity, and indeed national pride-occurs through processes primarily imagined and framed, indeed marketed, as deterritorialized; free floating and even outwardly reaching, an omotenashi-style reception so to speak. ...
This chapter argues that Cool Japan nation branding programs are symptomatic of inverted globalization: a promotional play on narratives of openness and interconnection, coupled with a simultaneous move by the Japanese state to contain (the meaning of) cross-border circulation and defensively reassert (the fixedness of) national boundaries. Specifically, I draw on ethnographic research with young American migrants in Tokyo to show the way these foreigners directly contribute to the production of the very media texts (in the case of videogames, as producers, programmers, marketers and translators) that are in turn framed by Cool Japan promotions as uniquely and distinctly Japanese. While dense transnational production circuits, and Japan’s efforts to globalize ahead of the coming 2020 Olympics, have created a migration stream for young English-speaking professionals to find work, once in Tokyo, these foreigners are in many ways systematically and structurally excluded from social life, and indeed from settling permanently in Japan. Cool Japan programs, policies and texts then, while calling for an increase in inbound flows of commerce and tourism, reflect the government’s strategic ambivalence to “diversity” and processes of globalization at the state-level which filter in this example to the everyday lives of (these more recent) migrants.
... In the process of seeking to describe and theorise how affective dynamics of mediated texts are ordered at various levels, I began to develop the emerging concept of affective discipline to complement the three other key concepts of this work. The notion of affective discipline is an offshoot of affective dynamics, as conceptualised by and , and is informed and inspired by the notion of emotional regimes discussed above, Langlois et al.'s (2009) remarks on communicative discipline, and Haselstein and Hijiya-Kirschnereit's (2013) notion of affect control (see also Valaskivi, 2016). Affective discipline is an attempt to discern how various actors seek to actively influence or direct the affective attunement and intensity of (online) discussions. ...
Download the thesis from: https://trepo.tuni.fi/handle/10024/123774
Set off by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and a subsequent tsunami, the March 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster was, in some ways, a series of simultaneously cascading events that appear to reflect several aspects descriptive of the early 21st century. The disaster resulted from multiple failings in a complex socio-technical system set in motion by an unexpectedly powerful natural phenomenon. As often during major disasters, the mediated coverage of the Fukushima Daiichi disaster was not just about what had happened and what was about to happen, but also about how the people involved in the events, either directly or vicariously, felt about what they experienced.
In this dissertation, I delve into the intersection of the hybrid media environment and mediated feeling by examining the role of affect in the coverage of the Fukushima Daiichi disaster. I focus on how affects circulate and stick in the mediated narratives about Fukushima Daiichi in Finnish and international contexts, in both journalistic reporting and social media discussions.
The introductory part of the thesis addresses the contemporary conditions of the hybrid media environment from a theoretical and methodological perspective. The aim of this section is to combine the understanding of affect with the notion of the public in a hybrid media environment, in the particular case of media coverage on the Fukushima Daiichi disaster.
Presenting the results of case studies conducted between 2014 and 2016, the five publications included in this dissertation open diverse angles to affective dynamics of social media discussions and journalism. Through their versatile empirical settings, the articles contribute to the ongoing debate in media studies on how contemporary social media shape the public discourse. The articles illustrate how social media simultaneously act as platforms enabling various types of public expression and allow for private multi-billion-dollar corporations to create revenue through collecting and selling the data generated by their users. The articles also discuss how users shift between different actor roles in these settings, moving between being the audience, informed citizens and peers exercising their right to public speech.
Each of the case studies provides a distinct angle to the actors and platforms that constitute the hybrid media environment. In two articles (Publication I; Publication V), the focus centres on the popular social media applications Twitter and Facebook, the analysis illuminating how affect circulates and sticks to certain figures in the conversations, and how affect is structured around cultural conventions, such as ritualised commemoration. One article (Publication III) examines what role traditional mainstream news journalism and scientific expertise play in circulating affect. Two articles (Publication II; Publication IV) examine how people use a mainstream media’s online commenting platform to express opinions and emotions about the news coverage of Fukushima Daiichi yet discuss scientific expertise in the same context.
The articles about Facebook and online news commenting (Publication II; Publication IV; Publication V) shed light on the affective dynamics in online discussion and develop the notion of affective discipline as a conceptual tool to analyse how moods and tones develop in these discussions. The articles focusing on mainstream media (Publication III; Publication IV) also use this concept to examine how public affect and emotion are managed during crises.
The results of the presented case studies provide new insights into the role of traditional mainstream journalism and social media during a global, disruptive event. By focusing on the concepts of affect and affective discipline, the study not only provides an analysis of media discussions about the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster that confirms previous results on the cultural circulation of affect, but also expands the knowledge on how journalistic practices and public discussion influence these processes. In addition, the work points to the affective labour done by journalists and members of the public alike when they engage in acts of affective discipline to manage the moods of public discussion. Through these mechanisms, the dissertation contributes to the theoretical and methodological discussion on how to study affect in mostly text-based media.
... Anholt (2011) noted that a good relationship between management of nation branding and resources is very essential in relation to improving the performance of nation branding in Kuwait. When management of nation branding is put into practice or implemented, it becomes one of the key elements that backs up the improvement (Valaskivi, 2016). Presently, there is lack of a KRNB model for assessing implementation of management of nation branding, particularly in Kuwait. ...
... When nation-states in the early twenty-first century get drawn into commercial branding campaigns, these are also the media forms focused on by nation branding researchers (e.g. Aronczyk 2013;Kaneva 2012;Surowiec 2016;Valaskivi 2016;Volcic and Andrejevic 2015). This is somewhat strange, since new nationalism research has indeed noted the changes in media technologies and analysed internet-based nationalisms. ...
In the formation of the modern nation state and the social imaginary of nationalism in the nineteenth century, the media and representational practices have, among most scholars, been ascribed a prominent position. The question is, however, how have changes in media technologies, from mass media to digital and interactive personal media, impacted on the national imaginaries over the past few decades? This article discusses what happens with the social imaginaries when national(ist) symbols are reproduced through the medium of PowerPoint, as one of the main tools for constructing images of the nation in nation-branding campaigns, i.e. promotional campaigns initiated by governments in conjunction with corporate actors with the aim of producing an attractive image of a country for foreign investors and tourists. It is concluded that the representational technology of PowerPoint produces a nation as an imagined commodity rather than an imagined community.
... Anholt (2011) noted that a good relationship between management of nation branding and resources is very essential in relation to improving the performance of nation branding in Kuwait. When management of nation branding is put into practice or implemented, it becomes one of the key elements that backs up the improvement (Valaskivi, 2016). Presently, there is lack of a KRNB model for assessing implementation of management of nation branding, particularly in Kuwait. ...
... Näiden lukuisten aloitteiden kautta Badolato pyrki määrittelemään itseään uudelleen ja siirtymään pois toivottoman ja syrjäisen paikan kategoriasta kohti ainutlaatuista, globaalisti arvokasta paikkaa (ks. Valaskivi 2016). Ehkä paikallisesti näkyvin tapaus Badolatossa oli saksalaisohjaaja Wim Wendersin vierailu Badolatossa 2010. ...
Kirjassa käsitellään pakolaisuutta mediassa. Teoksen tapaukset käsittelevät muun muassa sosiaalisen median, dokumenttielokuvien, romaanien ja uutisjournalismin kautta sitä, kuinka media muokkaa tunteita osaksi tiettyjä moraalisia käsityksiä. Kirja on myös osa humanitarismin, hyväntekeväisyyden ja solidaarisuuden tutkimusta.
Tutkimukseen perustuva kirja osoittaa mediakeskustelun sudenkuopat, toistuvat ongelmat ja eettiset haasteet. Se tarjoaa myös esimerkkejä uudentyyppisistä ja rakentavista tavoista käsitellä pakolaisuutta mediassa.
... The same applies to politics; even though politicians may have a long career in policymaking, they can be branded as ordinary, 'inevitably flawed individuals, which gives them an 'authentic' quality contrasted with distant and aloof politicians' (Wood et al. 2016, p. 586). Similarly, a good 'brand narrative' (Timm Knudsen and Waade 2010, Dean et al. 2015) is crucial for organizations, for instance nation-states, which are branded as being modern, technologically advanced nations, combined with stories of their heroic past and depictions of their unique, 'authentic' national cultures (Aronczyk 2013, Valaskivi 2016. ...
The article proposes that authority denotes an actor’s appeals or other references to objects or facts that she expects others to respect or fear. The paper identifies four types of authority: capacity-based, ontological, moral, and charismatic. That is, authority can be built on the assumption that an actor is capable of accomplishing things; on expertise or respected accounts of reality; on deference to principles; and on extraordinary awe attached to an organization or individual. Such authority can be called epistemic capital. Those who are more successful in piling up epistemic capital behind their projects have more influence on others’ conduct.
... The two types of justifications may draw on different understandings of common good. While previous research suggests that sustainability is often justified with "green" values (Thévenot et al., 2000), nation branding appeals to national aspirations that draw on various types of value, including increase or improvement of creativeness (Ooi, 2008), trendiness and "coolness" (Jansen, 2008;Valaskivi, 2016), corporate citizenship (Volcic & Andrejevic, 2011), kinship (Mihailovich, 2006), efficiency and productivity (Kaneva, 2011;Simonin, 2008), new products and services (Fan, 2006(Fan, , 2010, partnership collaboration (Bookman & Martens, 2013), or ecological sustainability (Szondi, 2010). ...
The role of governments in business and society research has remained underexplored, and recent studies have called for further investigations of mechanisms of government intervention. In response to this call, this article studies how nation branding communication can govern businesses toward sustainability by providing qualifications for sustainable business, legitimizing these qualifications, and attaching national aspirations to business conduct that meets these qualifications. A comparative exploratory analysis of the nation branding materials of Denmark and Finland shows that while the two nations qualify business sustainability in similar ways, differences exist in the legitimization of business sustainability and the national aspirations attached to sustainable business conduct. Both countries emphasize principles of efficiency and renewability in their sustainability qualifications. However, while Finland clearly seeks to attract firms to the local business environment to increase exports and improve the local economy, Denmark ascribes more heterogeneous value to sustainable business.
Drawing on manga/comics studies and exhibition research, this essay examines the world-traveling exhibition Manga Hokusai Manga: Approaching the Master’s Compendium from the Perspective of Contemporary Comics by The Japan Foundation (started in 2016). After a brief survey of manga exhibitions in Japan, the discussion focuses on what the show in question “tells,” both verbally and visually, and what it “affords”: How are naturalized notions complicated, including the assumption that the artist Katsushika Hokusai coined the term manga and that the popularity of contemporary comics can be traced back to his Hokusai Manga? Does the priority of visual comparison at the expense of explicit verbal explanation facilitate Orientalist readings? Is the visitor positioned as student or partner? How is cultural content interrelated with media-specific forms? The essay’s closing section shifts the focus from representing “Japan” to representing manga, and a Postscript briefly reviews The Citi Exhibition Manga, held by the British Museum in 2019.
In 2004, South Africa was awarded the opportunity to host the 2010 FIFA World Cup. The opportunity to reshape their national identity in the spotlight of the World Cup came at a particularly useful time for South Africa. Despite the country’s seemingly miraculous transition from apartheid to democracy—a transition lauded around the world—the country’s reputation was soon dragged down by concerns about crime, unemployment, and a rising rate of HIV infections. Although a number of scholars have looked at the long- and short-term effects of South Africa’s effort at creating a national identity during the 2010 FIFA World Cup, questions of process remain to be explored. What rhetorical strategies were employed to build this national image? What role did developing social media platforms play in the World Cup campaign? What were the communication tactics that led to a successful World Cup campaign? Using the theory of dialectical vernacular, I argue that South Africa was able to use the stage and emotional setting of the World Cup, in combination with a unique moment in time in branding and social media, to cultivate and deploy user-generated content to create a sense of authenticity that successfully sold a positive image of South Africa to the world. Essentially, South Africa was able to take digital material that was submitted by citizens around the country, and around the world, and use it to build a campaign that was vernacular, transnational, and embodied in nature. This allowed them to manufacture a national identity that effectively (at least in the short term) redirected conversations away from the more complicated issues affecting the country to, instead, showcase South Africa as a successful democratic nation.
As a global power, China is a provocative case study for nation branding practitioners and scholars. It is mired in a contested process of global image-making animated by Western media headlines, often negative ones, which draw the ire of the country’s Foreign Ministry and its ripostes. Into the fray are also self-representations, or nation branding moments, that disseminate idealized visions of the country. This paper dissects two such promotional events: an art exhibit and a science fiction blockbuster through visual and narrative analysis. It considers how cultural diplomacy, political ideology, and visuality coalesce to engender images of the nation, punctuated by the country’s prized cultural values and global political yearnings. Rather than examining official branding campaigns, this study is grounded in the liminal space of popular culture where there is state oversight, and yet, also some creative freedom. The findings point to two time-related themes and visual strategies that showcase the country through its distinct dynastic past and through anticipatory spectacles of its hoped-for future. These serve as a harbinger of nationalistic visions to come. An understanding of this time-sensibility and visuality of Brand China yields a keener sense of how the country reinforces itself as a global leader.
Despite a growing recognition of the role of the media in nation branding, a clear understanding of the relationship between the latter and foreign correspondents is absent and needed. Although foreign correspondents are a key target of nation branding, studies generally depict these journalists as vehicles exploited by authorities and consultants rather than actors in their own right. Drawing on twenty-one interviews with foreign correspondents who have covered Brazil in the last two decades, this article identifies three relationship modes between journalists and nation branding: ‘challenging’, ‘aligning with’ and ‘filtering’ soft power. These modes open up a more nuanced understanding of the soft power-journalism nexus, with foreign correspondents having the potential to be collaborators or antagonists of soft power. Acknowledging the agency of Western journalists in relation to soft power initiatives is especially important for Global South nations, due to the dependency of the latter on securing positive coverage by overseas news organisations and their perceived need to be recognised by the West. Moreover, although foreign correspondents claim to contest the version of Brazil put forward by authorities, they ultimately favour similar forms of national imagination, emphasising economic performance, global inequalities and consequently restricting alternative possibilities to communicate the nation.
This study analyzes national discourses on the representation of the countryside and gender in Makoto Shinkai’s anime, Your Name (2016), a fictional response to larger national policies and an imaginary resolution of post-disaster anxieties that invokes the horrors of the Great East Japan Disaster on 11 March 2011.
- Published in: Japanese Studies (ISSN 1469-9338)
The journal allows me to share 50 free online copies of this article with friends and colleagues.The link to the free online copies of this article is: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/JUP3GGBF82VJFBRDMKUC/full?target=10.1080/10371397.2021.1966298
In his introduction, Tupasela outlines the theoretical contours of population branding. Taking science and technology studies (STS) as his starting point, he locates his work at the intersection of critical data studies (CDS) and nation branding. Using examples from two Nordic countries—Denmark and Finland—he identifies changes during the past ten years that suggest that state-collected and maintained resources, such as biobank samples and healthcare data, have become the object of marketing practices. Tupasela argues that this phenomenon constitutes a novel form of nation branding in which relations between states, individuals, and the private sector are re-aligned. Population branding, which he identifies as originating in the field of medical genetics, has increasingly incorporated marketing practices developed in the private sector in order to market state-controlled resources. The exploration of population branding practices helps provide understanding of how state-controlled big data is increasingly being used to generate new forms of value.
In this chapter, the author addresses the role of population branding in constructing notions of national genomic futures, which are central to national visions of the future contributions of populations to value creation. He highlights how the trope of Nordic exceptionalism and social trust is used to frame the uniqueness of Danish society as an important characteristic and value-adding component of conducting research in Denmark, discussing it with reference to the setting up and development of the Danish Genome Center. In the Finnish context, the author focuses on the specific case of FinnGen—a major national research project—to highlight the ways in which branding, marketing, and science are brought together to attract foreign investment and collaboration in the field of biomedical research. Tupasela then compares and contrasts the two cases, noting how notions of value within these contexts transcend the commodification paradigm.
The chapter begins by presenting the discourse that describes Nordic biobanks and health care data resources as the “Nordic gold mine,” then moves on to examine marketing in two organizations in Denmark and Finland—Healthcare Denmark and Sitra—to elucidate how professional branding practices are employed to market them. The prominence of biobanking and biomedical research infrastructure in marketing strategies is then explored through the cases of the Danish National Biobank and the Finnish biobank portal Fingenious. Tupasela also highlights infrastructural designs for the national development of so-called one-stop shops to facilitate the acquisition of biobank material and data—noting the important role of population branding in making them effective conduits of national resources.
Soccer is seen as an extended instrument to brand China in the post-Beijing Olympic period. This article explores how the brand of China is expressed and negotiated through the lens of soccer by adopting the content analysis method to deconstruct the media texts specific to sports mega-events. The findings show the creation of a number of media frames accompanied by a new tradition in the representation of Chinese national identity, featuring the rhetoric of a ‘powerful’ nation and social prosperity attributed to the projected common goal of elevating China to be a world soccer superpower by 2050. These media frames provide insights into the underlying personalities of the country’s brand, including humiliation, world hegemony, trust and superiority. We argue that the merit of nation branding in China is more engaged with the inwardly oriented political exercise aiming at restructuring national identity for the purpose of consolidating the state’s legitimacy and social cohesion. The proposed sports nation branding framework expands the scope of critical research on nation branding within the context of identity politics in relation to sports. It underlines the significance of strengthening the personality traits of a nation’s brand through developing a thriving soccer culture. Due to the growing importance of soccer in East Asia, this article has both domestic and regional significance.
In the second decade of the 21st century, the practices, discourses, and implications of nation branding have attracted growing interest from scholars in the humanities and social sciences seeking to understand the linkages between national identities, reputations, governance, and the phenomenon of nation branding. This strand of critical research, as opposed to instrumentalist approaches, is the focus of this review. In line with the scope of the journal, the review looks at nation branding research that relates to the countries of the former communist bloc. The analysis finds that the state of the field is fragmented due to its multi-disciplinary nature. It is also argued that the field may be suffering from methodological nationalism. The discussion identifies epistemological and theoretical approaches, pointing out gaps and limitations along the way. It is suggested that research in the field can be grouped into “identity studies” and “practice studies” as a way to better understand key theoretical influences. Finally, it is proposed that future research should look at nation branding both as a field of practice that merits critical examination in its own right and as a lens that can be used to investigate changes in the state of nationhood today.
This chapter examines the second dimension of analysis, the strategies of mediated visibility. Drawing on the analysis of interviews, the chapter provides a more nuanced examination of how some of the struggles for the mediated visibility of Brazil were conducted during the June Journeys. It argues that, as part of the struggles to make the previously discussed frames visible, authorities, activists and journalists employed strikingly similar strategies to replace, adjust and re-appropriate mediated images and accounts. This observation challenges assumptions that the authorities and mainstream media necessarily protect the status quo, whilst alternative media collectives—and sometimes the foreign media—necessarily challenge power relations. Actors at different times either reinforced or challenged power relations, depending on what they perceived was going to be more beneficial to their own agendas. Hence, although some of the three strategies challenged the status quo, others relied on its reinforcement, even when used by those who claimed to confront the Brazilian elites.
This chapter presents the theoretical basis for the book. It outlines pertinent theories of nations and nationalism, particularly in relation to Latin America, which stress conflict and transformation as essential characteristics of the nation, in an age when globalisation and populism have amplified external and internal struggles. This chapter also looks at the relationship between the media and the nation, highlighting how theorists have traditionally focussed on the media as sources of consensus rather than contestation. The above debates precede the proposition of a conceptual model to analyse the June Journeys as struggles for and over the mediated visibility of Brazil. That model suggests three dimensions of analysis: the visible, the strategies of mediated visibility and the conditions of mediated visibility.
This concluding chapter summarises the main arguments of this book. The examination of the June Journeys throws into sharp relief the profound transformation of mediated nationhood in a digital, transnational and difficult to control media environment, whilst acknowledging the continuing influence of ‘old’ media and their adaptation to the opportunities and challenges of digital technologies. Although the spread of digital media has increased the complexity of the media environment, facilitating more actors to take part in shaping images of the nation, this environment is highly restricted and unequal. Power imbalances between actors remain, not only within the nation, but also between nationals and individuals and organisations from the West. The chapter also argues that accounts of the nation are highly reactive, with actors continuously contesting what has been shown previously. This state of never-ending reaction makes images of nation particularly fleeting. Such ephemerality runs the risk of making visible the most superficial aspects of the protests, emptying them of their meanings as well as masking the reasons that drove people on to the streets during those surprising and unpredictable weeks of June 2013.
In the previous chapter, we opened up the discursive aspect of epistemic governance as a framework by which to make sense of those working for social change.
The book investigates emerging forms of media solidarities in the digital era. The concept of solidarity has gained new due to globalization, individualization and the weakening of the welfare states that have made both the need and acts of solidarity more visible than before. With rich combination of social and political theory the book offers coherent understanding and definition of media solidarities with wide range of international case studies from news media to reality television; from social documentaries to social meidactivism. With particular focus on emotions and affect it offers nuanced view to understand and critically analyse the representation, participation and production of contemporary solidarities and their political implications.
Drawing on the case of post-war Kosovo, this chapter explores how nation branding intersects with a neoliberal development agenda. The author argues that Kosovo’s “Young Europeans” campaign was an effort to legitimize the adoption of economic policies and ideologies that served the interests of global capital rather than of the local population. Furthermore, the campaign articulated a post-ethnic, cosmopolitan, entrepreneurial national subject, while disregarding real social divisions. By juxtaposing the campaign’s messages with material indicators of life in Kosovo, the analysis raises questions about the winners and losers of neoliberal development. The chapter ends with lessons for a broader understanding of the changing nature of the nation-state under a neoliberal regime and suggests directions for future research at the intersection of public diplomacy and development communication.
The article examines Russia’s international multinational broadcaster RT (formerly Russia Today), which was launched in 2005 with the direct support of the Russian government. RT promotes a distinct ‘counter-hegemonic’ brand of broadcasting. This article goes beyond RT’s branding to explore the broadcaster’s nation branding of Russia. It considers the range of strategies used by RT, placing these within RT’s change of mission – from ‘informing others about events and life in Russia’ to comprising those ‘who question more’. By analysing RT’s coverage of the Republic of Crimea in 2016, and using a framing approach, the article explores RT’s branding of Russia and the online audience’s engagement with this within the contemporary transnational, convergent media environment. This article forms part of the Theorizing Media in Nation Branding special issue.
The Swedish Number is a 2016 marketing campaign by an independent tourist association that relies heavily on a developing heritage of Swedish nation branding initiatives. It uses media technologies to encourage citizen participation in promoting Swedish values, partly for the purpose of showing the country’s authentic side and partly for generating publicity. This article conducts a case study of the campaign in order to explore the ways in which media technologies were used to circulate tropes originating in the official nation brand in the service of a commercial interest. We argue that Brand Sweden has established a set of national identity resources that may be leveraged through public participation, vast publicity drives via media technologies and through mimicry of the national interest. Such a study supports a closer analysis of the ways in which nation brands influence identity politics via media technologies. This article will be of much interest to scholars of nation brands, cultural studies, participatory culture, national identity and transmedia engagement. This article forms part of the ‘Theorizing Media in Nation Branding’ Special Issue.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyse the communication management of the Swedish and Norwegian Governments during the 2015-2016 refugee crisis. It does so in the context of recent debates into public diplomacy (PD) and nation branding, on the understanding that governments seek to manage their reputations in order to attract trade, investment and tourism, as well as generate broader interest in their policies and values.
Design/methodology/approach
The study is based upon a case study of each country’s response, and draws upon qualitative interviews and document analysis.
Findings
The study finds that more than a decade of advances in PD can be readily adapted to negative branding aimed at dissuading undesired publics. However, opportunities remain for communication professionals to ensure that brand values are not discarded.
Originality/value
The study is among the first to examine the contemporary PD and nation branding apparatus when it is used to dissuade and even repulse target groups. It therefore explores some important issues related to communication management in the public sector.
In June 2013, the largest series of protests that Brazil had experienced in more than twenty years erupted in cities across the country. News from Brazil and abroad reported that people protested against the money that local authorities spent on hosting the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games, rather than on the provision of basic public services. The demonstrations, which journalists and academics called the June Journeys, challenged the Brazilian authorities’ efforts to construct and project an image of Brazil as a harmonious and modern nation. This thesis focusses on the reasons and conditions underpinning the media coverage of the June Journeys in relation to the image of Brazil. The study explores the tensions for and over the symbolic construction, projection and contestation of the nation in the current interrelated, transnational and contentintensive media environment. Theoretically, the thesis draws on scholarship on nationalism, media and nationhood, media and social movements, and mediated visibility. Empirically, the study analyses two datasets: (1) 797 newspaper articles, television reports, online videos and photos produced by Brazil’s main newspapers and television newscasts, alternative media collectives, and a selection of foreign media from the United States and Western Europe; (2) sixty-three interviews with Brazilian journalists, foreign correspondents, activists and government officials, who participated in the media coverage of the protests. The analysis of these two datasets suggests that the current media environment is a space of constraint rather than pluralism, in which traditional power imbalances are reproduced. The authorities, activists and journalists constructed competing images of Brazil and then employed strikingly similar strategies to make these images visible. The research also underlines how norms, routines, market imperatives and technologies shape and limit the type of images of the nation shown by these various individuals and organisations through the media.
This article traces the limits of branding as a tool for (re)constructing nations as 'imagined communities' (Anderson 1983). Drawing on examples from post-socialist Eastern Europe, I analyse discourses and practices of nation branding from a critical perspective, rooted in the theoretical traditions of political economy and cultural studies. Focusing more closely on branding campaigns implemented by post-Soviet Ukraine and post-war Kosovo — two nations seeking to assert themselves as independent actors on the global stage — I consider the impact of nation branding on national identities and democratic governance. I identify three interconnected limits of the branded national imagination as a structuring discourse for nation building. First, the branded national imagination is structured through its subjection to a foreign gaze; second, it is heavily dependent on commercial transnational media; and third, it produces branded national subjectivities that contradict the lived experiences of national populations. I argue that while nation branding effectively depoliticises national (re)definition, it may in fact serve to reinvigorate ethnic nationalisms in the post-socialist region. Finally, I suggest that although we must be aware of local histories and legacies, the post-socialist experience can inform our understanding of the structuring limits of the branded national imagination in other post-conflict and post-colonial contexts as well.
Kitabın 1. baskısı 2017 yılında yayınlanmıştır. Güncellenmiş 2. baskı E-Book formatında yayınlanarak okuyucuların ilgisine sunulmaktadır.
1990’lı yılların sonlarında ortaya çıkan ulus markalama (nation branding), 2000’li yıllardan günümüze dek 100’ün üzerinde ülke tarafından uygulanmıştır. 1996 yılında Simon Anholt tarafından önerilen ulus markalama kavramı; ulusların da ürünler, kurumlar, siyasi partiler veya şehirler gibi marka haline getirilerek yönetilebileceğini öne sürmüştür. Uluslar; tarihsel, politik, toplumsal, kültürel ve ekonomik açılardan çeşitli çağrışımlara sahiptirler.
Uluslararası düzlemde ulusların resmî temsilcileri olan hükümetler veya diğer yetkili resmî merciler tarafından yürütülen ulus markalama girişimleri, belirlenen hedefler doğrultusunda ulusun istikrarlı çağrışımlara ve arzulanan imaja sahip olmasını amaçlamaktadırlar. Ulus markalama ile bir ülke ekonomik potansiyelini gerçekleştirebilmekte, kamu diplomasisi uygulayabilmekte, yumuşak güç elde edebilmekte veya ulusal bütünlüğünü güçlendirebilmektedir. Kitabın ilk bölümünde ulus marka kavramı kuramsal açıdan ele alınmaktadır. Kitabın ikinci bölümünde ulus markalama uygulamaları tartışılmakta; Avrupa, Asya, Kuzey ve Güney Amerika, Okyanusya ve Afrika kıtalarından toplam 33 ülkede gerçekleştirilen ulus markalama girişimleri incelenmektedir. Ulus markalama alanında derinlikli bir kaynak olma özelliğini taşıyan bu kitabın; marka iletişimi, ulus-devlet, ulusal politikalar, uluslararası ilişkiler, kamu diplomasisi, turizm ve ülke tanıtımı gibi farklı alanlara katkı sağlaması düşünülmektedir.
This article explores the propagation of national narratives through football in both the Spanish and the European media in the period 2008–2012. The Spanish national team's victories in the 2008 and 2012 Euros and the 2010 World Cup resulted in the consolidation of a domestic “narrative of success” that depicted Spain as a flourishing, modern European country. Yet as the economic crisis increased, Spanish governments, mass media, and corporations promoted this narrative of success as a “compensation mechanism,” aiming at making up for the country's dire financial situation. In the European media, the initially benign portrait of Spaniards was gradually transformed into a new representation that depicted Iberians as slackers and scroungers of European Union funds. The article shows the re-emergence of derogatory stereotypes as a manner of making Spaniards scapegoats for the economic crisis, while reinforcing nationalist narratives among Europeans.
This chapter examines the emergence of nation brands discourse in the mid-1990s. It includes Robin Cook’s ethical foreign policy agenda which proposed a “people’s diplomacy”; the infamous discourses around Cool Britannia; a case study of the first contemporary diplomatic promotional campaign, new IMAGES, which was held in Australia in 1997; the major internal change study, Foresight; the Panel 2000 inquiry into Britain’s overseas projection; early efforts to develop an online presence; and the Britain Abroad Task Force, which was the first coordinating body of the contemporary era for Britain’s image abroad.
Using mediatization as the key concept, this article presents a theory of the influence media exert on society and culture. After reviewing existing discussions of mediatization by Krotz (2007), Schulz (2004), Thompson (1995), and others, an institutional approach to the mediatization process is suggested. Mediatization is to be considered a double-sided process of high modernity in which the media on the one hand emerge as an independent institution with a logic of its own that other social institutions have to accommodate to. On the other hand, media simultaneously become an integrated part of other institutions like politics, work, family, and religion as more and more of these institutional activities are performed through both interactive and mass media. The logic of the media refers to the institutional and technological modus operandi of the media, including the ways in which media distribute material and symbolic resources and make use of formal and informal rules.
Nation branding is a contemporary, transnationally circulating practice, the most recent feature of imagined nation-making in the global history of nations. While earlier imaginations of nationhood rooted their ideas and philosophy in core political concepts, such as citizenship, national sovereignty and democracy, the social imaginary of nation branding takes its theory and practices from marketing. The paradox of nation branding is that it is a method of distinction adopted by nations because other nations have done it. As a practice, nation branding is thus a circulating fashion of governance, a performance necessary for modern nations to adopt to maintain their status as competitive states in the global economic competition. The paper compares the nation-branding strategy documents of Finland and Sweden (2005–2013). The strategies of the two countries bear a remarkable resemblance to one another. Some of the similarities can be explained by their close cultural proximity. Nevertheless, comparison exemplifies how the global fashion of nation branding becomes a localized performance which requires the pretence that the process is unique within each nation. In other words, the imagined community of the nation and the legitimacy of branding are sustained through the belief that while everybody else is also branding their nation, ‘our’ brand is uniquely authentic.
World Television: From Global to Local, a new assessment of the interdependence of television across cultures and nations brings together the most current research and theories on the subject. By examining recent developments in the world system of television as well as several theories of culture, industry, genre, and audience, author Joseph D. Straubhaar offers new insights into the topic. He argues that television is being simultaneously globalized, regionalized, nationalized, and even localized, with audiences engaging it at multiple levels of identity and interest; therefore the book looks at all these levels of operation.Key FeaturesDraws upon both international communication and cultural studies perspectives: Presents a new model is presented that attempts to move beyond the current controversies about imperialism and globalization.Looks at historical patterns: Historical patterns across cultures and countries help compare where television has been and where it is going.Takes a contemporary focus: Uses of technology, flows and patterns of program development, genres of television, the interaction of producers and audiences, and patterns of audience choice among emerging alternatives are examined. Explores how the audience for these evolving forms of television is structured: The effects of these forces or patterns of television have on both cultural formations and individual identities are identified.Intended AudienceThis is an excellent text for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in Globalizatiion and Culture, Global Media, Television Studies, Television Criticism, and International Media.
Nation branding is a rapidly developing practice for promoting images of a nation-state for tourists or investors, sometimes with the secondary goal to foster nation building. It has also attracted a fair amount of scholarly attention. Analyses have focused on various themes, including national identity and neoliberal approaches to nation building. Given that the practice of nation branding presupposes the orchestration of mediated
campaigns, surprisingly few studies have specifically focused on the role of the media.
This article argues that a focus on the media (as technologies and organizations) can shed light on the dynamics of nation branding. The article reviews previous research, then presents a specific case of nation branding in Ukraine. This case study reveals the different types of media involved and how this involvement may have varied consequences for the analysis of branding campaigns.
This article develops a cultural theory of firstness and argues for its importance in understanding contemporary cultural circulation. It argues that firstness is a metaculture that plays a role in making culture circulation faster, more reliant on quantification, and more promotional. After drawing support from philosophical, historical, and theoretical understandings of firstness, the article pays particular attention to the cases of web-based comment threads and music blogs to showcase how the competition to be first is central to the cultural ecosystem, especially but not only online. The conclusion suggests how firstness might be indicative of a recursive cultural mode.
On December 10, 2011, the first tweet was sent out from the @Sweden Twitter account, a nation-branding project financed by the Swedish government through the Swedish Institute and VisitSweden. Trumpeted by the media both in Sweden and internationally as an exercise in “transparent” and “democratic” nation-branding via the use of Twitter, the @Sweden account is “given” to a new Swede every week, and, supposedly, these curators are given free rein to tweet what they like, when they like. The use of a popular communication channel by the Swedish government—in this case, Twitter—provides an illuminating example of the carefully planned and managed promotion and nation-branding of Sweden, presented under the guise of a “transparent” and “democratic” selection and editorial processes. The @Sweden project will be addressed in light of “liberation technology” (Diamond, 201011.
Diamond , L. 2010. Liberation technology. Journal of Democracy, 21(3): 69–83. [CrossRef], [Web of Science ®]View all references) and “technology discourse” (Fisher, 201012.
Fisher , E. 2010. Contemporary technology discourse and the legitimation of capitalism. European Journal of Social Theory, 13: 229–252. [CrossRef], [Web of Science ®]View all references) perspectives, within which a correlation between access to, and use of, technology and proactive change is postulated. These theoretical perspectives are particularly valuable when heeding Kaneva's (201119.
Kaneva , N. 2011. Nation branding: Toward an agenda for critical research. International Journal of Communication, 5: 117–141. [Web of Science ®]View all references) call for a more critical, communications-based understanding of nation-branding.
One of my teachers, the late Donald Davie, delighted in describing works of art with metaphors drawn from weather reports. All artistry, he suggested, tended to either the cool or the hot For Davie, the paragon of cool was found in sculpture. The sculptor, confronting the cold and unforgiving marble, practices an art requiring meticulous care, precision, and attention to even the smallest details. The hot artist, in contrast, neglects subtle gradations in a celebration of intensity, a mad abandonment to the creative force.
I learned much of my love of the cool in my classes with Davie, who made it clear which of the two extremes he preferred. One of his books was called, in fact, The Poet as Sculptor. And his description of lesser “hot” works-overblown efforts which he characterized as “warm,” “moist,” and “mushy”-had a decidedly pejorative edge.
Given my love of the cool, I often wonder why I ever gravitated to jazz. Jazz is not only a hot art form-it may well be the hottest. No other creative pursuit celebrates immediacy and intensity to such an extent. Not only does jazz abandon itself to the moment, it actually refuses to accept any longer time horizon.
Notions of social change are often divided into local versus international. But what actually happens at the national level—where policies are ultimately made and implemented—when policy-making is interdependent worldwide? How do policy-makers take into account the prior choices of other countries? Far more research is needed on the process of interdependent decision-making in the world polity.
National Policy-Making: domestication of global trends offers a unique set of hybrid cases that straddle these disciplinary and conceptual divides. The volume brings together well-researched case studies of policy-making from across the world that speak to practical issues but also challenge current theories of global influence in local policies. Distancing itself from approaches that conceive narrowly of policy transfer as a "one-way street" from powerful nations to weaker ones, this book argues instead for an understanding of national decision-making processes that emphasize cross-national comparisons and domestic field battles around the introduction of worldwide models.
The case studies in this collection show how national policies appear to be synchronized globally yet are developed with distinct "national" flavors. Presenting new theoretical ideas and empirical cases, this book is aimed globally at scholars of political science, international relations, comparative public policy, and sociology.
Online communities have become popular among geographically distributed users of the internet. However, there is growing interest in using online communities to support social interaction in geographically-based communities too. In this chapter, we study the value of online sociability and the role of local networking in two different online social internet sites. We present the results of a survey carried out among members of Finnish Facebook groups, and complement the results with interviews for users of a local online service for people living in the surroundings of the city of Helsinki. The goal of this study was to investigate how online groups and services with local content connect with real-life networks and sociability, or whether they remain separated. The results show that Facebook is used mainly for nourishing existing friendships online and less for meeting or looking for information on new people. However, Facebook groups are often connected to real-life activities and places, thus local connections and networks play an important role in the use of Facebook. For the users of the local online service My City, the strong local identity experienced and attachment to the place of residence were important motivators for active participation and the creation of content.
In this article I will present and discuss the Swedish virtual embassy as a new example of nation branding. By exploring the development of the Swedish embassy in Second Life, activities arranged by and involving the virtual embassy as well as the surrounding discourse of international mainstream media and people engaged in the development of Second Life, I will analyse the significance of the virtual environment in this virtual nation-branding project. I argue that the most important achievement of the Swedish virtual embassy was reached through the connection with the virtual environment in the coverage of traditional international mass media and that the key dimension, although not the only one, of the virtual world in branding Sweden was to serve as a fresh and influential brand signifier within the marketing project.
'Imagined Communities' examines the creation & function of the 'imagined communities' of nationality & the way these communities were in part created by the growth of the nation-state, the interaction between capitalism & printing & the birth of vernacular languages in early modern Europe.
Neoliberalism--the doctrine that market exchange is an ethic in itself, capable of acting as a guide for all human action--has become dominant in both thought and practice throughout much of the world since 1970 or so. Writing for a wide audience, David Harvey, author of The New Imperialism and The Condition of Postmodernity, here tells the political-economic story of where neoliberalization came from and how it proliferated on the world stage. Through critical engagement with this history, he constructs a framework, not only for analyzing the political and economic dangers that now surround us, but also for assessing the prospects for the more socially just alternatives being advocated by many oppositional movements.
Usually, a country brand is not focused, resulting in unsuccessful place branding. It is possible to successfully raise your national identity to the level of an attractive brand. Building a country brand is an investment, with strong positive returns. This book will guide you along the path to building a successful brand.
Re-Inventing the Media provides a highly original re-thinking of media studies for the contemporary post-broadcast, post-analogue, and post-mass media era. While media and cultural studies has made much of the changes to the media landscape that have come from digital technologies, these constitute only part of the transformations that have taken place in what amounts of a reinvention of the media over the last two decades. Graeme Turner takes on the task of re-thinking how media studies approaches the whole of the contemporary media-scape by focusing on three large, cross-platform, and transnational themes: the decline of the mass media paradigm, the ongoing restructuring of the relations between the media and the state, and the structural and social consequences of celebrity culture. By addressing the fact that the reinvention of the media is not simply a matter of globalising markets or the take-up of technological change, Turner is able to explore the more fundamental movements and widespread trends that have significantly influenced the character of what the contemporary media have become, how it is structured, and how it is used. Re-Inventing the Media is a must-read for both students and scholars of media, culture and communication studies.
It is argued that a central feature of all communication, and mass communication in particular, is a process of mediation involving organizing and interpretive schema embedded in specific formats. This mediation process may be conceptualized as a general social form that is used to direct and inform social activity and cultural phenomena. Individual action and meaning in everyday life weaves in and out of these organizing and interpretive schema. Building on symbolic interaction theory, so-called media effects are recast as cultural phenomena or content that derive meaning through symbolic references in the formal (format) properties of specific media.
The Synchronization of National Policies shows how it is possible that there is remarkable uniformity in the policies that the nation-states adopt, although there is no world government. Mainstream research attributes such global governance to the influence of leading countries, to functional requirements created by capitalism and technological development, or to international organizations. This book argues that to understand how national policies are synchronized we need to realize that the global population forms a single global tribe of moderns, divided into some 200 clans called nations. While previous research on the world culture of moderns has focused on the diffusion of ideas, this book concentrates on the active role of local actors, who introduce global models and domesticate them to nation-states. In national policymaking, actors justify new policies by international comparisons, by the successes and failures of models adopted in other countries, and by building and appealing to the authority of international organizations. Consequently, national policies are synchronized with each other. Yet, because of the way such domestication of global trends takes place, citizens retain and reproduce the understanding that they follow a sovereign national trajectory. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of sociology, world culture theory, globalization, international relations, and political science.
This volume provides, collectively, a multi-layered analysis of the emerging East Asian media culture, using the Korean TV drama as its analytic vehicle.
Brands are everywhere. Branding is central to political campaigns and political protest movements; the alchemy of social media and self-branding creates overnight celebrities; the self-proclaimed "greening" of institutions and merchant goods is nearly universal. But while the practice of branding is typically understood as a tool of marketing, a method of attaching social meaning to a commodity as a way to make it more personally resonant with consumers, Sarah Banet-Weiser argues that in the contemporary era, brands are about culture as much as they are about economics. That, in fact, we live in a brand culture. Authentic™ maintains that branding has extended beyond a business model to become both reliant on, and reflective of, our most basic social and cultural relations. Further, these types of brand relationships have become cultural contexts for everyday living, individual identity, and personal relationships-what Banet-Weiser refers to as "brand cultures." Distinct brand cultures, that at times overlap and compete with each other, are taken up in each chapter: the normalization of a feminized "self-brand" in social media, the brand culture of street art in urban spaces, religious brand cultures such as "New Age Spirituality" and "Prosperity Christianity,"and the culture of green branding and "shopping for change." In a culture where graffiti artists loan their visions to both subway walls and department stores, buying a cup of "fair-trade" coffee is a political statement, and religion is mass-marketed on t-shirts, Banet-Weiser questions the distinction between what we understand as the "authentic" and branding practices. But brand cultures are also contradictory and potentially rife with unexpected possibilities, leading Authentic™ to articulate a politics of ambivalence, creating a lens through which we can see potential political possibilities within the new consumerism.
This book aims to change the way we think about religion by putting emotion back onto the agenda. It challenges a tendency to over-emphasise rational aspects of religion, and rehabilitates its embodied, visceral, and affective dimensions. Against the view that religious emotion is a purely private matter, it offers a new framework which shows how religious emotions arise in the varied interactions between human agents and religious communities, human agents and objects of devotion, and communities and sacred symbols. It presents parallels and contrasts between religious emotions in European and American history, in other cultures, and in contemporary western societies. By taking emotions seriously, this book sheds new light on the power of religion to shape fundamental human orientations and motivations: hopes and fears, joys and sorrows, loves and hatreds.
In academic and popular discourse, the power of media in current globalised and "postdemocratic" societies is often discussed with the notion of "mediatisation." It suggests, for example, that media institutions are increasingly infl uential because they dictate the way issues are framed for public discussion. Consequently, other institutional actors (in politics, science, religion) have had to internalise a "media logic" in order to sustain their power and legitimate their actions. Recent studies of mediatisation largely ignore Jürgen Habermas' early use of the term "mediatization" in order to analyse the relationship between system imperatives and lifeworlds. While at fi rst this use may seem distant to recent concerns, a return to Habermas can enhance the theorising of mediatisation and media power in two ways. First, by underscoring the importance of a system-theoretic vocabulary it helps to unpack the notion of "media logic" and narrow down the specifi c power resource of the media (i.e. what is the "medium" of the media). Second, by articulating a fundamental criticism of system-theoretic vocabulary it opens a normative perspective for an evaluation of the media's democratic function (i.e. the "quality" of mediatisation). This essay highlights, elaborates and illustrates each of these potential contributions by looking at journalism research in general and drawing on a recent empirical study on the mediatisation of political decisionmaking in Finland.
This book explores the development, content, and impact of world culture. Combining several of the most fruitful theoretical perspectives on world culture, including the world polity approach and globalization theory, the book gives a historical treatment of the development of world culture and assesses the complex impact of world culture on people, organizations, and societies. This is a provocative, synthetic, and grounded interpretation of world culture that is essential for any student or scholar of globalization and world affairs. Traces world culture back from the mid-19th century to the present day Includes numerous illustrations of key issues and empirical research Written in lively, accessible language for the student and general scholar.
Authenticity has become a widespread ethical ideal that represents a way of dealing with normative gaps in contemporary life. This ideal suggests that one should be true to oneself and lead a life expressive of what one takes oneself to be. However, many contemporary thinkers have pointed out that the ideal of authenticity has increasingly turned into a kind of aestheticism and egoistic self-indulgence. in his book, Varga systematically constructs a critical concept of authenticity that takes into account the reciprocal shaping of capitalism and the ideal of authenticity. Drawing on different traditions in critical social theory, moral philosophy and phenomenology, Varga builds a concept of authenticity that can make intelligible various problematic and potentially exhausting practices of the self.
What does it mean to watch two-hour long news programmes every evening? Why are some people 'addicted' to the news while others prefer to switch off? Television is an indispensable part of the fabric of modern life and this book investigates a facet of this process: its impact on the ways that we experience the political entity of the nation and our national and transnational identities. Drawing on anthropological, social and media theory and grounded on a two-year original ethnography of television news viewing in Athens, the book offers a fresh, interdisciplinary perspective in understanding the media/identity relationship. Starting from a perspective that examines identities as lived and as performed, the book follows the circulation of discourses about the nation and belonging and contrasts the articulation of identities at a local level with the discourses about the nation in the national television channels. The book asks: whether, and in what ways does television influence identity discourses and practices? When do people contest the official discourses about the nation and when do they rely on them? Do the media play a role in relation to inclusion and exclusion from public life, particularly in the case of minorities? The book presents a compelling account of the contradictory and ambivalent nature of national and transnational identities while developing a nuanced approach to media power. It is argued that although the media do not shape identities in a causal way, they do contribute in creating common communicative spaces which often catalyse feelings of belonging or exclusion. The book claims a place in the emerging sub-field of media anthropology and represents the new generation of audience research that places media consumption in the wider social, economic and political context.
Nation Branding: Concepts, Issues, Practice is a comprehensive and exciting text that demonstrates why nations are embracing the principles of brand management. It clearly explains how the concepts and techniques of branding can be adapted to the context of nations- as opposed to the more usual context of products, services, or companies. Concepts grounded in the brand management literature such as brand identity, brand image, brand positioning, and brand equity, are transposed to the domain of nation branding and supported by country case insights that provide vivid illustrations of nation branding in practice. Nation branding is a means by which more and more nations are attempting to compete on the global stage. Current practice in nation branding is examined and future horizons traced. The book provides: The first overview of its kind on nation branding A blend of academic theory and real world practice in an accessible, readable fashion A clear and detailed adaptation of existing brand theory to the emerging domain of nation branding An original conceptual framework and models for nation branding A rich range of international examples and over 20 contributions by leading experts from around the world Country case insights on nation branding strategies currently being utilized by nations such as Japan, Egypt, Brazil, Switzerland, Iceland, and Russia Clearly and coherently structured, the book is an essential introduction to nation branding for both students and policymakers and will be an essential text for those interested in this fast growing area.
This book examines the concept of new public diplomacy against empirical data derived from three country case studies, in order to offer a systematic assessment of policy and practice in the early 21st century.
Machine derived contents note: Contents -- Chapter 1: The Rise of Homo Sentimentalis -- Chapter 2: Suffering, Emotional Fields and Emotional Capital -- Chapter 3: Romantic Webs.
Social media technologies such as YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook promised a new participatory online culture. Yet, technology insider Alice Marwick contends in this insightful book, "Web 2.0" only encouraged a preoccupation with status and attention. Her original research-which includes conversations with entrepreneurs, Internet celebrities, and Silicon Valley journalists-explores the culture and ideology of San Francisco's tech community in the period between the dot com boom and the App store, when the city was the world's center of social media development.Marwick argues that early revolutionary goals have failed to materialize: while many continue to view social media as democratic, these technologies instead turn users into marketers and self-promoters, and leave technology companies poised to violate privacy and to prioritize profits over participation. Marwick analyzes status-building techniques-such as self-branding, micro-celebrity, and life-streaming-to show that Web 2.0 did not provide a cultural revolution, but only furthered inequality and einforced traditional social stratification, demarcated by race, class, and gender.
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We live in an age where the media is intensely global and profoundly changed by digitalization. Not only do many media events have audiences who access them online, but additionally digital media flows are generating new ways in which media events can emerge. In times of increasingly differentiated media technologies and fragmented media landscapes, the ‘eventization’ of the media is increasingly important for the marketing and everyday appreciation of popular media texts.
The events covered include Celebrity Big Brother, 9/11, the Iraq war and World Youth Day 2005 to give readers an understanding of the major debates in this increasingly high-profile area of media and cultural research.
In this introductory article for the special section on circulation, we examine the concept of circulation from theoretical and methodological perspectives. By drawing on media and social theory, we argue for the relevance of circulation in theorizing current on-the-move social dynamics. Three particular perspectives are introduced in this exercise: non-linearity, action and materiality. As a methodological tool, circulation refers to the tracking and tracing of social actions. In this article, we examine in particular the creation and maintenance of social imaginaries. Our context of analysis is contemporary highly media-saturated society. A case study on media circulation of the 2011 death of Apple CEO Steve Jobs illustrates our theoretical and methodological reflection.