The mediatized nation. Identity, agency and audience in nation branding campaigns

Abstract

Nation branding is a dynamic and rapidly developing practice and a subprocess under the wider process of mediatization for promoting or readjusting images of a nation-state for tourists or investors. Especially young nation states have a felt need to build new images of themselves in the eyes of the surrounding world, but since these nation states also have a short history of sovereignty, they simultaneously need to build the social solidarity and community inwards, to form the basis needed for the building of a nation. This article takes its departure in this tension and addresses three themes –agency, audience and identity– that we consider needs further theorizing due to the fact that the practice is yet trying to find its form. These themes are discussed in relation to the branding efforts in the new Eastern European state of Ukraine over the past decade. It is concluded that the nation branding campaigns are today orchestrated also by domestic PR agencies (to the contrary of the previous dominance of British agencies), that the domestic audience is taken into consideration in other ways than in previous branding campaigns, and that the questions of identity construction is more complex than what is previously accounted for. The Ukrainian case thus illustrates the mediatization of national symbols in contemporary society.

Keywords

• Nation branding
• mediatization
• identity
• audience
• agency