Page 309 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

| Nat onal sm and the Med a

a growing number of films, programs, Web sites, and so forth are creating
transnational identities. Sizeable immigrant communities often establish media
that speak to their consumers not just as Americans, or as citizens of another
nation, but as both. Many of America’s larger cities have foreign-language radio
stations and television programs addressing such individuals and communities,
while cheaper international phone charges, the Internet and e-mail, and large
networks of piracy and legitimate media trade allow people to live in one coun-
try but feel connected to more than one. Home, in other words, is becoming
ever more a mindset, and one that requires no set physical location.
American media are particularly pervasive around the world, leading some to
worry about the prospects of American national identity seeping into especially
the younger, media-hungry generations of non-Americans. By contrast, non-
American media does not often travel as easily around the world, and thus we
must not overstate the possibilities for a mediated transnational identity. Never-
theless, when, for instance, one can check a foreign newspaper daily online,
watch imported videos, listen to imported music, and subscribe to foreign satel-
lite stations, one may be able to be American and another nationality.
Meanwhile, the explosion of global media also increases the possibility that
some of us will fashion cosmopolitan, global identities, leaving the notion of the
singular national identity behind us. Or, if not truly international identities, at
least the media might fashion regional identities, as, for instance, the European
Union funds trans-European media initiatives, or as Al-Jazeera and other satel-
lite services address transnational viewerships predominantly in a set range of
countries.
Ultimately, then, the media have been the very tools that made national iden-
tity and nationalism arguably the most important unit of identity for twentieth-
century world politics, and it continues to do so; however, the media is now also
offering alternatives and ways beyond the nation for some, and ways to chal-
lenge and attack mainstream myths of nationality for others.
see also Al-Jazeera; Alternative Media in the United States; Bollywood and
the Indian Diaspora; Cultural Imperialism and Hybridity; Government Cen-
sorship and Freedom of Speech; Islam and the Media; Media and Citizenship;
National Public Radio; Political Documentary; Presidential Stagecraft and Mil-
itainment; Propaganda Model; Public Opinion; Representations of Race; Run-
away Productions and the Globalization of Hollywood; Sensationalism, Fear
Mongering, and Tabloid Media; Tourism and the Selling of Cultures; World
Cinema.
Further reading: Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin
and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1991; Downing, John D. H. Radical Media:
Rebellious Communication and Social Movements. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2000;
Gellner, Ernest. Nations and Nationalism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
1983; Hutnyk, John. The Rumour of Calcutta: Tourism, Charity and the Poverty of
Representation. New York: Zed, 1996; Lull, James, ed. Culture in the Communication
Age. New York: Routledge, 2000; McCrisken, Trevor, and Andrew Pepper. American
History and Contemporary Hollywood Film. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University
Press, 2005; Miller, Toby, Nitin Govil, John McMurria, and Rick Maxwell. Global