Ever-changing Flags: Impact and Ethics of Modifying National Symbols Jo˜ ao M. Cunha, Pedro Martins and Penousal Machado CISUC, Department of Informatics Engineering University of Coimbra {jmacunha,pjmm,machado}@dei.uc.pt Abstract In this paper, we propose the demonstration of a system that changes country flags based on trendy topics re- trieved from news titles. We give an overview of the system and introduce the reader to several topics on which the system has impact. Introduction Flags are among the symbols of a nation that help the for- mation and maintenance of a national identity, both inter- nally—among its citizens—and externally—keeping a co- herent sense of oneness in perception of other countries and entities. This process of maintaining a collective identity is described by Geisler (2005) as an “ongoing, dynamic pro- cess in which historical symbolic meanings are constantly recycled, actualised, challenged, renegotiated, and recon- firmed”. In fact, it is possible to analyse the evolution of a flag and its transformations, relating them to changes in the entity that the flag stands for (e.g. political changes in the country). Moreover, by looking at country flags one can easily identify similarities among them, which point to how different flags influenced each other throughout history (Healy, 1994). The exploration of this relational character is observed in imag- inary scenarios, for example an alternate universe in which Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan won the World War II. This scenario is depicted in the Amazon’s mini-series “The Man In The High Castle” (Heller, 2015), resulting in the design of fictional flags for an America ruled by Nazi and Japanese forces. Going beyond the reflection of its evolutionary path, a flag exerts it most significant role as a mean of conveying the intended image of the entity that it stands for. One exam- ple is design of a new European Union by Rem Koolhaas based on the essence of the European project as a join effort of different nation states, each with its own identity but to- gether contributing to a plural identity of EU 1 . The redesign resulted in a barcode-style flag featuring the colors of EU countries, transmitting the idea of individual identities and simultaneous advantages of acting together. On the other hand, the sense of identity has also fragili- ties. The value of one’s identity makes it so that it is of- 1 https://oma.eu/projects/eu-barcode Chile “Police” 15th November 2019 Kuwait “Saudi” 15th July 2020 Zimbabwe “Drought” Norway “Oil” Poland “EU” Philippines “Growth” Chile “Virus” Kuwait “Deaths” Zimbabwe “Health” Norway “Border” Poland “Election” Philippines “Virus” Figure 1: Flags generated on November 15th 2019 and July 15th 2020. Below each flag, the country of the original flag and the topic used in the generation are identified. ten prone to exploitation and manipulation, for example by the misappropriation of flags. The Double Standards project (Pater, 2012) investigated 59 seajacked ships that mask their owner’s nationality by purchasing a “cheap flag” from an- other country to avoid taxes and environmental regulations. Such examples highlight how volatile an identity can be, es- pecially in a time when individual identity loses power to the growing advances of globalisation. Moreover, in addi- tion to this dissolution of individuality, in the current society characterised by constant change, the idea of an immutable identity becomes more and more questionable. This sense of fluid identity is explored, for example, in the Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Computational Creativity (ICCC’20) ISBN: 978-989-54160-2-8 410