I am...

My name is Tom Murphy. When I was ten years old I moved from suburban Long Island to central London, where I attended British school before returning to the US for college. For the last twelve years I’ve been oscillating over the Atlantic, visiting family in the US and returning to the UK for school, which gave me constant exposure to both American and European media. Through witnessing the various ways in which different nations’ news broadcasters treated similar issues I realized the enormous significance in mass media’s shaping of culture and politics. However, growing up with the rise of the Internet, I’ve become acutely aware of an increasing cultural convergence sweeping America and Western Europe.With all the heated international debate regarding the War on Terrorism, I would always find myself surprised and confused when I travelled between countries where the national moral stances were completely polarized. In the UK it seemed every media outlet treated American international policy as nothing short of jingoism, while American media of all forms embraced an intense patriotism. When social networks like Facebook became popular I noticed a similar disparity in my American and English friends groups and political statements.

However, as time went on and the Internet inherited the channel of a news broadcaster I saw a diminishing dichotomy between the two countries I’ve grown up in. Much of this seemed to be based in Barack Obama’s succession of George Bush. Almost overnight, international media changed its perspective of America as an ignorant aggressor to a new hope for progressivism. This change benefitted me, as my national identity in the UK was no longer something to treat as insignificant.