The Green East

In the introduction of Arab Media: Power and Weakness by Kai Hafez, he introduces Gadi Wolfsfeld’s political contest model, which outlines several theoretical fields of media study that can help frame our understanding of media. Concepts related to these fields of study include regulation and censorship, activism, capital ownership, media ethics, advertising, and audience preferences.

For my blog, it will be very important to consider capital ownership, both in the context of media ownership and whether capital investments come from within or outside of the region. Media ownership will greatly impact how sustainability projects are represented and capital ownership can potentially have large implications for the geopolitics of the region.

Over the past few years, U.S. media has been particularly concerned with China’s involvement in Africa and the Middle East could be a potent area for Chinese capital expansion. In fact, China has been involved in the Middle East since the 1990s and is currently seeking to strengthen its relationship with the region.

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If China is able to gain a foothold in this region, it may threaten the U.S’s influence in the region and will certainly impact U.S media’s framing of sustainable development projects in the region.

Welcome to The Green East, a blog about the current state and future of sustainability in the Middle East.

Over the course of the semester, I will be highlighting several countries in the region and focusing on how those countries are responding to the threats of climate change and economic instability. In many cases, I will write about specific projects, such as Saudi Arabia’s planned zero-carbon city, Al-Namas.

In addition to an economic analysis of sustainable development projects, I will also be providing an analysis of how they are being presented in media, both from within and without the region, to give a more complete analysis of the viability of and public attitudes toward these projects.

I am looking forward to studying this very interesting region and some of the ways they are preparing for the effects of climate change, and I hope you will enjoy reading this blog!