ABSTRACT

There are general as well as specific shifts and tendencies in the changing role that the media plays in a project which have also been important in creating the conditions for commercial nationalism. This chapter focuses on the general shifts and tendencies in the role played by the media. The concept of commercial nationalism has proven helpful in analysing the strategies through which the commercial media has been able to blur, and indeed to manipulate, the distinction between the national interest and their own commercial objectives. Banet-Weiser’s account helps us understand why the investment in the brand has been such a successful strategy for the forces of marketization, and for commercial nationalism, to have adopted. Where commercial nationalism has developed, the commercial media has discovered that one of the ways through which its commercial interests can be supported in a highly competitive national market is through generating, or embedding already existing, performances of nationalism within its entertainment formats.