Nationalism and media

The study of media nationalism has had a curious history. Some of the “classic” studies of nationalism have placed the media at the heart of their work but say very little about media theory or research. More recently, studies of populism and nationalist parties have talked quite a lot about the impact of digital technologies but have very little to say about nationalism. This piece first provides a brief overview of some of these classic studies before noting how insights from the study of media, and in particular audiences, began to filter through to nationalism research in the 1990s and early 2000s. It then addresses both the discursive and digital turns that influenced wider debates around the relationship between media and nationalism over the past decade or so, before outlining the limitations of such work and possible avenues for future research.