Challenging the Hegemony of the Nation State in an Age of Conflict and Crisis

Abstract

This guest editor’s introduction to the special section “Essays on Nationalism, Conflict and Media” describes the current global context as one where old assumptions about the world lack credibility. The idea of the nation state as the building block of a less violent and more sustainable global order is strained to breaking point. But even as the need for cooperation across borders becomes more obvious, an anti-global, xenophobic nationalism seems only to have strengthened its ideological hold. The essays in this special section explore various dimensions of nationalism and conflict as they pertain to the media. Normatively, they are grounded in the universal humanist or cosmopolitan ideal of world citizenship. This introductory essay argues that not just media but also media scholarship should challenge the hegemony of the nation state, resisting the methodological nationalism that characterises most of the work in the field.