Book Review | Mediatizing the Nation, Ordering the World

Mediatizing the Nation, Ordering the World by Andrew Dougall explores how developments in communication technology influence and facilitate nationalist movements. Comparing Trump’s breakthrough via the rise of the New Right in the US with the 19th-century Greater Britain movement, this timely, important intervention sheds light on how fringe views can enter the mainstream and media’s key role in shaping the international order, writes Alena Drieschova.

Mediatizing the Nation, Ordering the World: Struggles for Redemption in Britain and the United States. Andrew Dougall. Oxford University Press. 2024.

Understanding New Right popularity

Andrew Dougall’s Mediatizing the Nation, Ordering the World is a highly topical intervention into contemporary debates about the role of the media, and social media in particular, in the rise of the “New Right” in the US, which has taken over the conservative party since Trump’s election in 2016. Dougall provides a much-needed comparative and historical perspective to demonstrate that social media and the internet are not the sole culprits for the popularity of the New Right. They are rather embedded in a complex and hybrid media environment, which has provided a permissive space for the New Right to continue in the footsteps of the paleoconservative movement, not necessarily thanks to the technological features of the media, but more importantly due to the practices and norms of their usage. 

Dougall compares the recent rise of the New Right in the United States to the Greater Britain movement at the beginning of the 20th century to prove, against some arguments in these ongoing debates, that the media sphere in the beginning of the twentieth century was quite distinct from the contemporary media environment. These differences explain why the Greater Britain movement eventually got shut down, whereas the New Right continues to flourish.

The media constitute meanings. In particular, they generate media-based communities

Redemptive nationalism and communication technologies

Dougall’s is not simply an argument about the rise and fall of ideologies on the far-right spectrum, it is rather an argument about world order, and the role communication technologies play in world ordering. In times of hegemonic decline, nationalist order contestations can emerge which take the form of redemptive nationalism. Redemptive nationalism aims at re-establishing past national glories by elevating the nation’s racial and civilisational core. It is not purely focused on the national level, but it is rather multiscalar, containing world ordering ambitions.

Communication technologies and the media play an important role in redemptive nationalism’s success to mount a challenge against an established world order. Because of mediatisation – the fact that everything that occurs in large societies is mediated – the media shape the messages that run through them. The media constitute meanings. In particular, they generate media-based communities, which are communities that emerge thanks to specific media, and would not exist otherwise. An example is the telegraph, which, with its unprecedented speed of communication, was used in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century to promote a Greater British nation compromising Great Britain and its white settler colonies.  Alternatively, mediatisation can give rise to mediatised communities, those which change their appearance following shifts in communication technologies. An example is the paleoconservative movement, which transformed into the New Right in the United States with the advent of the internet and following mainstream media’s ostracisation.

Protean vs. control media

Next to mediatisation, communication technologies’ affordances are important, because in conjunction with the practices of usage (i.e. journalistic and editorial practices) they control whose and what kinds of messages will disseminate to large audiences. Here, Dougall distinguishes between protean media, and control media. Under protean media (eg, the internet) a diverse set of actors can seize the opportunities the communication environment offers to disseminate their messages widely. Under control media, (eg, broadcast news) a set number of actors and messages will spread, while more fringe views that do not align with the mainstream perspective get marginalised. Dougall deploys his theoretical apparatus to evaluate two projects of redemptive nationalism: the Greater Britain project and the contemporary New Right in the US.

The New Right […] not only promotes a vision of white nationalism at home, but also seeks to destroy multilateralism and the Liberal International Order.

The Greater Britain project’s attempt to leverage empire

The Greater Britain project sought to develop a new kind of nationalist-imperialist polity in the face of hegemonic decline. It aimed to unify all the British white settler colonies under a singular government, and thus create a new political entity that was distinct from the 19th century colonial empires, as well as the 20th century nation-state. The imperial press system promoted the ideas of Greater Britain, while marginalising the narratives of the subjugated indigenous peoples. Yet, domestically the ideas of Greater Britain, which appeared quite extreme from a centrist perspective, remained at the margins, as the workings of mainstream print media made it hard for marginal views to gain wider dissemination.

How the New Right entered the mainstream

Secondly, the New Right in the United States, not only promotes a vision of white nationalism at home, but also seeks to destroy multilateralism and the Liberal International Order. It has its antecedents in the paleoconservative movement, one of two branches of the conservative movement from the 1950s (the other being a new conservative consensus, later called neoconservatives). Paleoconservatives were gradually pushed to the margins of the media landscape because print and broadcast media were control media. Paleoconservatives’ distrust of mainstream media as discriminating against them became a key element of their discourse. However, even neoconservatives felt marginalised by mainstream media, and thus pushed for a liberalisation of media regulation in the late 1980s. Once accomplished, it allowed for hyper-partisan broadcasting on cable TV and radio talk shows.

With the advent of the internet and a more protean media environment, marginalised voices could disseminate widely, and the New Right seized this opportunity in the 2010s. Noticing its success, hyper-partisan neoconservative cable TV channels like Fox News and radio talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh converted to the New Right. In an effort at objectivity and portraying all perspectives, centre news channels also provided proponents with much coveted media space.

An important reading for international relations scholars who, as Dougall rightly observes often overlook the mediated nature of international order, and therefore the importance of the media for international ordering.

Media’s role in shaping the International Liberal Order

Dougall is explicit that he only focuses on the production and dissemination of messages through the media sphere, not on their reception in the population. As such, the book unpacks the necessary conditions for the proliferation of fringe ideas to the centre. It does not explore the sufficient conditions for why certain ordering projects garner mass popular support. Different alternative explanations exist, which range from discussions about economic factors such as the cost of living and relative economic deprivation, to identity dynamics and a desire for social recognition, to individual psychological factors like the appeal of emotionally charged messaging. When deliberating on which policies to adopt to address reactionary ordering projects, a consideration of the reasons for their popular appeal must be just as important as a reflection upon the conditions of possibility for the spread of New Right messaging.  

In sum, Mediatizing the Nation expertly elaborates on the conditions of possibility for the spread of reactionary thought from the margins to the mainstream by directing attention to the journalistic and editorial practices that generate the space for such developments. It is an important reading for international relations scholars who, as Dougall rightly observes often overlook the mediated nature of international order, and therefore the importance of the media for international ordering. For scholars in communication studies the book provides a rare international and systemic perspective, given that their work typically tends to be anchored in domestic and comparative politics. Now that Dougall has sketched out the supply side of media messaging, it is important to interconnect it with the demand side of populations’ receptivity to different types of messages. Since the supply and demand for messages are profoundly interconnected, mutually conditioning one another, one can only be understood in the context of the other.