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The article explores the relation between identity definition and trust in different information sources in Morocco, Jordan and Tunisia following the 2011 Uprisings. While prior to 2011 literature mostly highlighted the role of pan-Arab news channels in consolidating a transnational Arab public sphere, recent studies argued that there has been a reinforcement of national media and identities in the Middle East and North Africa, as a consequence of a partial liberalisation of national broadcasting. Our study is based on the Arab Transformations survey (2014), which unlike previous surveys included questions covering both media consumption and identity definition. We looked at how in the three countries the choice of Muslim, Arab or national identity definition was associated with the preference for distinct sources of political news. The results only partially confirmed the hypothesis of a renewed importance of national media and showed that in the three countries people tended to attribute very different values to the same news sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that news coverage plays an important role for national identity building in the way that it evaluates the own nation better than foreign nations (in-group/out-group bias). This notion is being transferred to the media as an element of national cultural identity. This article identifies analogies between national identity building through the mass media and the third-person perception, which states that people assume others to be more vulnerable to negative media influences. It is hypothesized that patterns of an international third-person perception occur in news coverage, i.e. the news media should present media influences in the own country to be weaker than in other countries. A first standardized content analysis (N = 2204) of newspaper coverage from the US and Germany on elections in own and other countries supports this hypothesis. Consequences are discussed and directions for future research are pointed out. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Although global migration is a complex transnational issue, media and policy discussions in wealthy regions often isolate immigration discourse within national frameworks. Using a Special Report on the BBC Online as a case study (and a 'best case' example of immigration reporting), this article illustrates the problems that are masked by 'objective' language used within the realm of national identity, and calls for media and policy researchers dealing with immigration to take a transnational view of societal transformations related to migration. In conducting a qualitative analysis that tests media frames against an established goal, this case study suggests the value of adding a normative aspect to framing research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article recounts the history of the numerous attempts to create or promote a European identity through television and explores the reasons for their failure. From the 1950s, engineers of the European soul, with the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) playing a central part, resorted to a variety of technologies and genres: simultaneous live broadcasts in Eurovision, news exchange, later satellite television, highbrow drama and popular entertainment notably with the Eurovision song contest. Even when they reached an audience, these attempts failed with respect to their main aim, as they were based on a false, deterministic view of television as a medium and on a dated, communicative view of the nation where media have the power to shape collective identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]