Globalization, Digitalization, and Renationalization: Some Reflections from Japanese Cases

Across the world, globalization processes have been significantly
activating cross-border flows and promoting the interpenetration of
capital, people, and media communication. The development of digital
communication technologies and social media with their affect-driven
capacities reinforce these tendencies. Globalization apparently disregards
national borders and undermines exclusionary national identities by
generating cultural mixing, hybridized identifications, transnational
dialogue, and cosmopolitan consciousness. Digital communication
technologies have further intensified mediated collectivities beyond and
across the nation, but these developments do not necessarily bring about
the weakening of national imaginations and nation-centered frameworks.
In many parts of the world, we have been observing the resilience of
national identity and the resurgence of nationalism. Globalization
and digitalization have promoted various modes of cross-border
connection, exchange, and confrontation while at the same time newly
highlighting the relevance of national borders. This paper will discuss
how renationalization accompanies the progression of globalization and
digitalization and considers the role of digital media and traditional
mass media in the reproduction of the nation, referring to Japanese cases
in which a growing concern with the promotion of national dignity
and national interests has been engendering hate-driven jingoism and
commercialized nationalism.