Capital Ownership and Sustainable Development
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.
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.