NEWS reports about communities and regions asserting their identity are capturing media headlines everywhere. While the media gives a lot of coverage to an event or action connected with the phenomenon – a referendum for independence in Iraqi Kurdistan or a vote for the same in the Catalonian parliament – the reasons that explain the assertion of identity are seldom analysed in depth.
The unique characteristics of the assertion of identity in a specific instance and why it is different from another similar episode elsewhere are hardly discussed in the popular media.