Media, Nationalism and European Identities

Chapter 6: The Media and Nationalism, East and West:A Revision of Existing Debates

CHapter 6 the Media and Nationalism, east and West: a revision of existing debates1 sabina MihelJ the upsurge of nationalisms and nation-state-building projects across eastern europe2 in the 1990s gave rise to a veritable industry of media monitoring and criticisms of hate speech, as well as numerous insightful case studies. However, apart from a handful of exceptions, the amassed literature available in english3 has done little in the way of providing theoretically informed comparative analyses, and even less in the way of advancing major theoretical debates on the relationship between nationalism and mass communication. this is partly due to practical obstacles, such as a lack of resources, language barriers, weak research infrastructure, and the relatively recent development of media and communication studies as an autonomous field of scientific inquiry in the region. the other major reason, however, lies in the established theories of nationalism and communication themselves, and in their often indiscriminate application to eastern european cases. 1 i would like to thank Václav Štětka, reana senjković, Veronika Bajt, the editors of this volume, and other members of the Cost network East of West: Setting a New Central and Eastern European Media Research Agenda for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this chapter. i have also profited from comments provided by the participants of the international Communication association pre-conference, organized in Budapest in June 2006. all the remaining mistakes are of course mine. 2 For the purposes of this paper, eastern europe is meant to include albania, Bulgaria, the Czech republic, estonia, Hungary, latvia, lithuania, poland, romania, the slovak republic, and all the states formed in the territory of the former Yugoslavia. 3 throughout the paper, references to existing research and literature are meant to refer primarily to available literature in english, though some works written in local languages are surveyed as well. i4 Jakubowicz.indb 173 2011.03.21. 14:26 174 National and transnational identities a more cautious approach to nationalism and mass communication in eastern europe has much to offer. the specificities of nationbuilding and cultural diversity in the region, combined with recent experiences of rapid political and economic transformation, should provide a strong incentive for rethinking some of the well-worn theoretical truisms. this chapter aims to make a first tentative step in this direction. it starts by outlining the major drawbacks of classic theories of nationalism and the media, and then turns to an examination of key differences and similarities between nation-building projects and patterns of cultural diversity in eastern and Western europe. the final two sections provide a critical revision of existing literature on nationalism and the media in eastern europe, and develop recommendations for future research. theories of Nationalism and the Media: Major Blanks Most of the widely quoted works addressing the relationship between the media and nationalism (e.g., anderson 1983, Gellner 1983, Billig 1995) are drawing primarily on a selection of post-World-War-ii experiences in Western europe and North america, and, to a more limited extent, on post-colonial experiences. such a selection of cases, particularly when combined with a teleological, West-centric theory of modernization , easily lends itself to the false assumption that by and large, modern national communicative spaces are internally homogenous and their boundaries coincide with state borders. patterns of mass communication that do not conform to this rule are either overlooked or treated as transitional or aberrant stages of development that should eventually give way to a homogenous national communicative space matching the political unit. this nation-state-centered approach has haunted media and communication research for almost half a century (schlesinger 2000). only after being faced with pervasive phenomena that could not be fitted easily into the nation-state-centered model—such as the rise of satellite and cable television, increased transnational migration and the proliferation of diasporic communication—have media scholars begun to question the classic theoretical framework (e.g., Morley and robins 1995; price 2002). over the past decade, this questioning has led to i4 Jakubowicz.indb 174 2011.03.21. 14:26 175 The Media and Nationalism, East and West a denunciation of the nation-state-centered framework, and prompted an exponential growth of research into the media of diaspora, multiculturalism and transnational communication (e.g., Karim 2003; Georgiou 2006). these recent theories acknowledge the mismatch between national communicative spaces and states and are therefore better suited to the analysis of patterns...