8/14/2019 Pobl Y Net - What Happens to Welsh National Identity in the New Global Media Community

1/9

MC2109Global Communications Robert Andrews

POBL YNET: WHAT HAPPENS TO WELSH NATIONAL IDENTITY IN THEN^W^.

GLOBAL MEDIA COMMUNITY? .

As ifWelsh national identity, or identities, were not already a muddied, complexmindset, in

the current media age it is undergoing still more reappraisals. This essay explores the

relationship between whatever 'Welsh national identity' may be and the established media,and looks to the new, manytomany media which must here be acknowledged as valid

media to find the future for Welsh nationality in the era of globalscale communication,

asking what the implications are when Welsh media users can be drawn into new arenas of

interpersonal and mass communication.

Welshness assumes commonality amongst the inhabitants of the political consciousness

known as Wales. So what is this national identity? One argument is that nations are nothing

more than 'imagined communities,' that the identity derived from claiming membership is the /* i hconstruction ofmasscommunicated ideologies and professional practices: L eKfi aA \^wftA :

OKJIA ^lia^U

"Each participant fin ritualistic mass

media use] is aware that the ceremony is beingI

. ,replicated simultaneouslybythousands ofothers ofwhose existent he is confident, yet ^^j/LtWtwL/

ofwhose identityhe has not the slightest notion."