The connections between all the readings on the media’s influence on nationalism and transnationalism for this week were profoundly interesting. In particular, how media helps to nurture civil society’s rituals and interpretation of nationalism, and how diaspora communities use media to help reignite or distinguish their “identity”. Similar to my fellow group member Emily, I have a morning routine. First coffee, then reading the first section of the Wall Street Journal front to back, followed by visiting the website of my hometown New Jersey paper to see what is going on in my town. The same routine happened when I studied in Australia. Reading the news on the Internet is a medium that has the power to foster a, “…global civil society (that) has the technological means to exist independently from political institutions and mass media…”(Castells, 14). Whether it is reading from traditional media outlets, or finding your news through a regional blog or opinion page, technology allows us to follow our ritual of transmitting information, while transcending barriers previously imposed by regional borders.
After being in Central America for a summer with minimal Internet access, I picked up an appreciation for telenovelas—which are amazing Spanish soap operas. I am only one of the many individuals who (still) actively consume transnational media to identify with another ethnocultural group, even if I am not directly from that nation. One of the things that I am curious about as Karim has stated, for those people who consume transnational media in order to, “...engage in ones one rhythms,” is their cultural media consumption an indicator of where their feelings of nationalism resides, like where they belong? Or with the constant ebb and flow of diaspora community's intake of this media within another nation's borders, is it a symbol of nationalism at all?
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