Navigating the national and global: media representation of refugees

This article makes a case for the increasingly important role of the media, especially the news media, in defining and representing the various discourses and debates surrounding globalisation. While globalisation and its associated processes have generated much debate and discussion about their impact on traditional conceptions of the nation, the state and its conceptual underpinning - state sovereignty - the role of the media in addressing these debates has often been overlooked. This article presents a critical theoretical analysis of an extensive body of relevant literature on democracy and national identity as well as more recent ideas emerging from globalisation studies. The analysis highlights the pivotal manner in which the media are implicated in representing the contentions surrounding globalisation and state sovereignty and thereby shaping public understanding and opinion formation. Finally, it draws from a cross-country empirical case study of the news media's representation of one relevant and compelling area of concern, refugees and migration, to indicate the complexity that exists in defining and navigating ideas of the 'national' and 'global'.