Blog Post 3: Critiquing the National Brand
The Eurovision song contest gives countries the opportunity to express themselves through a three- minute performance to viewers across the globe. By choosing how to portray themselves, it shows how each country would like to be represented by. The contest also gives the opportunity for countries to nation brand themselves or to simply just participate in the song contest. According to the Oxford dictionary, national identity is “a sense of a nation as a cohesive whole, as represented by distinctive traditions, culture, and language” (Oxford Dictionary). The national identity of a country plays an important role in nation branding which is “the phenomenon by which governments engage in self-conscious activities aimed at producing a certain image of the nation state” (Bolin and Stahlberg 82). Going more in depth on Portugal’s performances, I will examine if they’ve chosen to implement certain aspects of their national identity and how they’ve portr...