Nation Branding in Latin America: Global, Regional, and Local Representations Intertwined

摘要

Through in-depth interviews with nation branding professionals involved with projects on behalf of Latin American countries, as well as a qualitative content analysis of nation branding advertisements of 18 Latin American countries, this dissertation proposes that nation brands are intertwined representations of a country's diverse cultures and identities. These are affected by specific global, regional, and local forces. Findings of this study report that, beyond their political and economic dependency on the Global North, Latin American nations depend on the representations about them through global news and entertainment media. At the regional and local level, there are times when nation brands are embraced or rejected by their intended audiences—both locals and outsiders to a country. These reactions are triggered by specific political, social, economic, and cultural contexts that are unique to each country, both at the global and local levels. In that process, cultural intermediaries tasked with nation branding projects have fallen, at times, into the dichotomy of portraying an "Us vs. Them" dynamic—explained by their feature of characters such as the foreigner ("Other") and the citizen of a nation ("Local") in their nation branding ads. The theoretical, ethical, and practical implications of this type of work are further outlined in this dissertation.