The Role of Cultural and Ethnic Identity in Contemporary Media Dynamics: Market Potential and Influence

Introduction: The research aims to elucidate the role of the media and the media market in the contemporary geopolitical landscape, both at the global and national levels. This will be achieved by examining the media’s potential to contribute to conflict within ethnic and cultural identity patterns and the formation and persistence of these patterns.Methods: The foundation of research consists of hypotheses, notions, concepts, and terminology devised in the field of globalisation and geopolitics and inseparable from national-cultural identity. Moreover, systemic, synergetic, dialectical, comparative, socio-cultural, and civilisational approaches constitute the methodological apparatus of the research.Results: Findings demonstrate that media products, as well as the media market itself, represent a resource considerably contributing to ethnic conflict mobilisation. In mass communication, social actors put all efforts into presenting their peace/conflict projects as beneficial ones to society. The findings also suggest that today, studies in media, journalism, and contemporary do not pay much attention to critical assessment of the role of news media in propaganda production and distribution on the basement of narratives within the domain of ethnic and cultural identity. Thus, the evident need for filling this research gap is stressed.Conclusions: In the current conditions, the media market has grown and transformed into a full-blown and inherent constituent of postclassical geopolitics. The issue concerning how culture’s symbolic capital functions in the information/media realm is increasingly becoming more than just an abstract theoretical one; it is becoming strategically important from a geopolitical standpoint.