engleski

Discursive Construction of Croatian National Identity: Celebrities in the Media

In the last few decades, the importance of celebrities in fields other than popular culture and entertainment industries has increased. New media technologies, the rising importance of the image, the profound changes in public communication which is now dominated by public relations and different forms of advertising are trends that have accelerated celebrification processes in different domains. In addition – as Ellis Cashmore (2006) points out - the crises of political representation and authority as well as the rise of a consumerism have created a society in which all domain of human experience obey to the rules of the market and the logic of profit. Celebrities are used by the industry in the promotion of ideas, products and services, they become means to promote politicians and political parties in campaigning ; and are used by civil society associations in the dissemination and advocacy of their different aims (Turner, 2004). As a relatively new phenomenon, celebrities are included in the construction of national identities, serving as 'brands' of a nation, since they are publicly known and (usually) respectable individuals who have the capacities to get the attention of a wide public. Nation branding has become especially important in the context of globalization and the crisis of identity of contemporary nation states - particularly of newly formed nation states - who are in a desperate need to, in Hobsbawm’ terminology, 'invent a tradition' (1983) in order to create a distinctive identity and hence gain external recognition. Since the dissolution of Yugoslavia, Croatia has been moving – both in institutional an discursive terms – from being a part of the Balkans or 'the Other of Europe (Todorova, 1997), to being a part of the 'civilized West' – a process which was (at least) formally concluded with the EU accession in July, 2013. Discursive constructions of the nation is an ongoing process, and amidst different institutions that strategically, or as a matter of contingency, participates in these practices, the media are perhaps a key institution through which national identity is discursively constructed. Media texts indicate what is viewed as a newsworthy event, and is a field of analysis which enables us to identify the ‘dominant cultural order (…) which have the institutional/political/ideological order imprinted in them and have become institutionalized” (Hall, 1999:513). Thus, in order to identify the ways in which the Croatian identity is discursively constructed in the media (both by looking at the 'voice' of the celebrity as well as the 'voice' of the media/journalist), a textual analysis was conducted. The analysis included articles published between 2010 and 2012 in two Croatian dailies (Jutarnji list and Večernji list) and four weeklies (Gloria, Story, Globus and National) with high circulations. The articles were selected if they included an interview or statement of a) a foreign celebrities visiting Croatia in the aforementioned period, and b) Croatian celebrities that are internationally recognized due to their achievements (according the Croatian press).

National identity, “nation branding”, celebrities, media

nije evidentirano