ABSTRACT
The first chapter touches on the national embedding of digital communication, by focusing on the cultural continuity between different technological regimes. First-hand data will be proposed for what concerns the top-followed YouTube and TikTok channels in the ten countries, which reveal a dominance of national influencers. The role of national movies in VOD repertoires will be addressed as well. The thesis that we will put forward, in a long duration perspective, is that the stability of the structure – framed in terms of imagined community and banal nationalism – would explain this contemporary media pattern way better than the much talked-about strains of balkanization, polarization, and de-globalization. Not only do those claims lack empirical backup, at the observation level: theory wise, they would also imply a stronger form of nationalism, which is not commonly associated to the sharing of national contents.
