'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 that it 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.