Rallying Around the Flag

Abstract

/ This study employs Anderson’s thesis of the imagined community as a heuristic to explain the formation of a national media sphere in the journalistic domain. Based on the argument that nationalistic sentiment continues to serve as an identity anchor in the contemporary global era during times of crisis, this study maps the emergence of a national ‘mediascape’ in The New York Times’s coverage of media industries following the historic plane crashes of 11 September 2001 in the US. The properties of an imagined community as delineated by Anderson — boundaries (limits), sovereignty (autonomy) and community (ideological proximity) — constituted the primary categories of analysis for examining the peak coverage of media industries in the three months following the crisis. The analyses demonstrate the mechanisms in the coverage through which a national mediascape was constructed at this time, drawing global media within the national fold.