National media events: from displays of unity to enactments of division

Despite the conspicuous presence of nationhood and nationalism in existing studies of media events and rituals, explicit conceptualizations of the link between these media phenomena and nationhood remain scarce. Drawing on existing literature and research on the topic, this article proposes to shift attention away from ceremonial occasions primarily aimed at celebrating national unity, towards the more distressing events and mobilization marathons enacting partition and instituting divisions among nations, ethnicities, cultures, races or religions. It provides a series of propositions regarding the involvement of media events in the transformation of audiences into nations, and discusses two categories of media rituals that are linked closely to contemporary forms of national mobilization: rituals of partition and mobilization marathons. Given the disentanglement of nations and states and the multi-ethnic nature of modern states and media spaces, such media occasions ought to receive more sustained attention in the future

Television entertainment in socialist Eastern Europe: between cold war politics and global developments

Television entertainment in socialist Eastern Europe: between cold war politics and global development

Approaches to television and nationalism: cross-country comparison, longitudinal analysis, popular culture and audience research

Approaches to television and nationalism: cross-country comparison, longitudinal analysis, popular culture and audience researc

Between segmentation and integration: media systems and ethno-cultural diversity in Central and Eastern Europe

Between segmentation and integration: media systems and ethno-cultural diversity in Central and Eastern Europ

The European and the national in communication research

The article discusses some of the major omissions and simplifications created by established approaches to European communication, in particular the inclination to think of Europeanization primarily, and often exclusively, in relation to things national. It points to the simplistic narrative that sees transnational communication in Europe as a very recent phenomenon, and demonstrates how this narrative glosses over various historical forms of transnational communication in Europe. It then briefly addresses the intellectual roots of this narrative, and argues that they also lead to neglecting the existence of diverse, often competing contemporary forms of Europeanization and transnationalization in public communication. Finally, the article argues that more sustained attention should be paid to subnational patterns of stratification of European communication, particularly those arising along class divisions

Television news and the dynamics of national remembering

Television news and the dynamics of national rememberin

Imperial myths between nationalism and communism: appropriations of imperial legacies in the north-eastern adriatic during the early cold war

In contemporary scholarly discussions, political uses of imperial pasts are typically associated with the rise of modern nation-states and nationalist principles of identity formation. Although clearly important, this approach can lead us to neglect the appropriations of imperial myths based on other types of ideological frameworks. In communist Eastern Europe, official representations of the past followed the imperatives of a historicalmaterialist vision of history, which, at least in its initial form, necessitated a rejection of both imperialism and nationalism. It is therefore reasonable to expect that communist appropriations of imperial legacies were significantly different from those found in Western Europe at the time. This article examines these different uses of imperial pasts – informed by either communismor nationalismor both – by focusing on the competing perceptions of imperial history and heritage at the Italo-Yugoslav border during the early Cold War

Understanding Socialist television: concepts, objects, methods

This article develops a number of conceptual and methodological proposals aimed at furthering a firmer agenda for the field of socialist television studies. It opens by addressing the issue of relevance of the field, identifying three critical contributions the study of socialist television can make to media, communication and cultural studies. It then puts forward a number of proposals tied to three key issues: strategies of overcoming the Cold War framework that dominates much of existing literature; the importance of a multilayered analysis of socialist television that considers its cultural, political as well as economic aspects; and the ways in which we can challenge the prevalence of methodological nationalism in the field

Audience history as a history of ideas: towards a transnational history.

One of the possible ways of approaching audience history is by focusing on the history of ideas about audiences. This article examines the benefits and shortcomings of such an approach and develops a set of methodological propositions, drawing on the principles and methods of the German tradition of Begriffsgeschichte (history of concepts). To demonstrate the usefulness of these propositions, the article briefly examines the ideas about audiences in socialist Yugoslavia, focusing on the surge of ideas about politically engaged audiences in the late 1960s. The concluding part of the article situates this historical episode in the wider geographical context and outlines possible avenues for a broader, transnational investigation of the history of ideas about audiences

The politics of privatization: television entertainment and the Yugoslav sixties

The politics of privatization: television entertainment and the Yugoslav sixtie