'Doing Nation' in a Digital Age: Banal Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism in Polymedia Environments

This book introduces a new theory of national identity, arguing that the nation does not only represent an abstract “imagined community” but also represents embodied cultural and discursive practices.

Drawing upon a detailed case study of Serbian Londoners, this truly interdisciplinary study positions media as constitutive of national identities. The author contends that nations come into being and are sustained through everyday interpersonal communication practices that have increasingly become mediated, especially for migrants. She develops the concept of “doing nation” to argue that we should think of the nation as a dynamic process. Situated first within a particular migration context, the concept is then applied more broadly as everyday communication practices are becoming increasingly mediated worldwide.

Covering a breadth of key theories and concepts in this field, including diaspora, ethnicity, nationalism, cosmopolitanism, social media affordances and polymedia, this book will appeal to scholars and students researching digital media, migration, identities, nationalism and cosmopolitanism in the social science disciplines.

About the author:

Sanja Vico is a lecturer in Communications and Digital Media at the University of Exeter. She previously worked as a researcher (postdoc) on an ERC-funded project “Justice Interactions and Peacebuilding” (JUSTINT) at the London School of Economics and Political Sciences (LSE). She obtained a PhD in Media and Communications from Goldsmiths, University of London, having previously graduated from the LSE and the University of Belgrade. She has published on issues of digital media in contexts of migration, nationalism, identity and post-conflict justice and peacebuilding. She received an honourable mention Best Paper Award Senior Scholar from the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA) for her paper “Globalized difference:” identity politics on social media.

Commentators:

Eric Gordy, Professor of Political and Cultural Sociology, UCL SSEES

Jasna Dragovic Soso, Professor Emerita of International Politics and History at Goldsmiths, TBC