Who is the “Villain of The Piece”? Assessing the post-crisis relationship between nationalism and the media

Abstract

This article presents an overview of the role of the media in nationalism and identity-shaping inpost-crisis societies experiencing conflict, focusing on the impact of the recent economic crisis ondiversity in political news reporting. The research is based on a time series analysis (2000–2019) ofdiversity in traditional and online political news reporting, framed by a thematic analysis of jour-nalists’interviews. Cyprus is used as a case-study, as an example of a‘divided’country. Findingssuggest that news diversity in societies experiencing conflict significantly reduced after the econ-omic crisis in traditional media but increased in online media. At the same time, representations ofnationalism in the news media seem to be taking alternative directions. The study challenges theway(s) in which media history is read in post-crisis societies experiencing conflict where the mediaplay a significant role in assessing notions of togetherness as opposed to images of separatism.