This dissertation investigates the everyday reproduction of nationalism in digital spaces and its consequences for political behavior in East Asia. Moving beyond elite-centric accounts, I conceptualize nationalism as an emotionally charged, performative, and routinized phenomenon, expressed in mundane acts such as online comments, memes, and symbolic language. Drawing on mixed methods across four empirical chapters and two national contexts—South Korea and Japan—I examine how exclusionary nationalist sentiments are articulated, sustained, and politicized in the age of ambient digital communication.For South Korea, I analyze nationally representative survey data to uncover how national pride interacts with political ideology to shape divergent patterns of political participation. While conservatives are more likely to participate when they feel proud of their nation, liberals engage more when national pride is low, reflecting contrasting motivational logic. The next chapter draws on large-scale text data from a major online community during the 2022 World Cup. The analysis shows that national solidarity often coexists with outgroup hostility—particularly toward Japan, Korea’s primary national rival—and that such emotional expressions reinforce national belonging. The third chapter uses a survey experiment to test the causal impact of everyday nationalism. Participants primed with ingroup pride or outgroup hostility showed mixed responses, but routinely digital exposure to nationalist discourse correlated with stronger militaristic and ingroup-oriented preferences. The final chapter turns to Japan, where qualitative analysis of anonymous online commentary reveals that nationalism is frequently performed through collective derogation of Koreans, especially Zainichi Koreans. These expressions reinforce a sense of superiority and unity, but accompanying survey data yields limited evidence that such sentiments translate into political mobilization, underscoring a gap between identity expression and civic action.Together, these findings demonstrate that everyday nationalism is not a dormant ideology but an active emotional practice that shapes political attitudes and behavior in asymmetric ways. The dissertation contributes to bridging nationalism studies and political behavior by illuminating the contingent and affective dimensions of national identity in digitally mediated societies.
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