Banal nationalism and everyday nationalism in experiential advertising. A sample of advertisements broadcast on the Catalan public television (2009-2017)

Abstract

This article explores representations of Catalan identity in contemporary experiential advertising in order to assess whether the symbolic universes and frames of meaning used exemplify the ideas of banal nationalism in Billig’s sense (1995) and/or everyday nationalism as described by Edensor (2002), in terms of retaining and reinforcing the mental frames of the nation. Drawing on a sample of 33 advertisements broadcast on TV3, the Catalan public television network, between 2009 and 2017, the ways in which commercial products are linked to a form of representation of Catalan identity through the images, traditions, people, landscapes and/or language they evoke are explored. The article also discusses how collective social and symbolic imaginations are produced and reproduced, in which products are associated with familiar contexts and discourses, normalizing patterns of behavior and consumption linked to certain lifestyles, culture or national models. Likewise, a significant proportion of the sample exemplifies how private agents may play an active role in the production and reproduction of the nation.