Page 308 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

Nat onal sm and the Med a |

of American and not-American may at times be helpful tools for creating ideal
notions of Americanness that call upon all Americans to live up to and earn the
label of “American,” they can also place obstacles in the way for those of certain
national, racial, religious, and ideological backgrounds.

mEDia BaTTLEgrounDs
However, to see the media as a purveyor of racist and exclusionary images
alone would be a considerable mistake. After all, precisely because the media is
often a key site of national identity construction, it is also a key battleground,
in which national identity can be debated and challenged. Bold and innovative
journalism, films, songs, television, and other media can challenge a nation’s
ideas of itself, can call for reflection upon and revision of past constructions, and
can pose new images. No national identity is written in stone. The past century
has shown how thoroughly a nation can redefine itself: Russia went from mon-
archy to communism to attempts at capitalist democracy; many of the world’s
countries have gone from being colonial vassals to independent nations; and
numerous countries have divided into several smaller nations. Therefore, the
media can always play a role in scrambling former identities and reevaluating
them for the future.
Nevertheless, as much potential as the media have, we must always inquire
into the interests of those who own the media if we are to determine which mes-
sages and images of nationality will be welcomed and which will be actively ex-
cluded. Hence, in America, with most media outlets running as commercial
ventures owned by a few large corporations, we might expect anticapitalist mes-
sages to struggle reaching the light of day. Or, in countries where dictators strictly
police the media, democratic messages will be rare. In this way, those who control
the media have significant influence over defining the nation. If the media is a
battleground for determining national identity, many Americans have no access
whatsoever to media production, and thus have no access to the battleground; as a
result, although it is often said that there are “two Americas”—one Republican and
one Democrat—a third America exists of a vast population who are continually
under- or misrepresented by a media system over which they have no control.
At the same time, though, independent media sources have always existed
in even the most brutal dictatorships, allowing underground poetry, film, lit-
erature, or news to implore citizens to rethink official, mainstream scripts of
national identity. Blogs, for instance, have been used to considerable success in
numerous countries, and political protest music has thrived since the advent
of recorded music. Such independent voices may lack the volume and reach of
their mainstream equivalents, but they still ensure that national identity never
truly atrophies in one position.

TransnaTionaLism anD BEyonD

As much as the media creates national borders, increasingly it is also moving
beyond these borders, too. Thus, just as the media can create national identity,