In the first few weeks of the course, we talked a lot about how large international media companies dominate the field of international communications and media. This week,some dramatic but relatively unsurprising information was leaked about an expansion to one of the largest media companies. Qualcomm, an enormous, San Diego-based telecommunications company is in talks to acquire NXP, a Netherlands-based semiconductor company. This consolidation, which is really a vertical expansion for Qualcomm, is predicted to drastically change the semiconductor industry. Qualcomm primarily produces chips for computers and smartphones, could see it’s profits grow by 30 percent.

This is also an example of how power over telecommunications infrastructure is placed largely in the hands of huge Western corporations. There is not room in the telecommunications field for smaller, non-western companies to jump in on the profits. However, as companies like Qualcomm grow and start to integrate more and more basic infrastructure creation into their business model, they will also be able to grow their business in other countries that could use more communications infrastructure. One example of this is the Mobile Health Information System that Qualcomm is developing in Sub-Saharan Africa. As citizens, we must be critical consumers not only of the media but of the media companies themselves. Qualcomm’s acquisition of NXP and subsequent growth could certainly benefit other countries, but it is crucial that we keep it in check so that large Westernized companies don’t take advantage of countries with less infrastructure.

This issue isn’t new, but it grows more and more important each day. In an article published by the Brookings Institution, global media scholar Madiha Afzal discusses the way in which the media (and as a result, the general public) are isolating Muslim Americans and Muslims around the world.

The way that media outlets cover stories about bombings in Paris, the U.S. and other Westernized countries is vastly different from the way that bombings in Pakistan and Syria are covered. Even though citizens in both sets of countries are victims to terrorism, the media tends to place less emphasis on the tragedy of deaths in countries that we “expect” to see war in. As consumers, we are also more likely to be apathetic to terrorism casualties in these countries as well, which only perpetuates the problem. By paying less attention to attacks in Muslim countries, media consumers create the impression that Muslim lives matter less than other lives. By changing our Facebook profile picture to support France after attacks last November, we unconsciously furthered this divide. And as the gap widens between Muslims (American, European, or Middle Eastern) and Western states, there is more risk that terrorist groups like ISIS will be able to recruit members that feel they have no where else to turn.

This is admittedly a hard problem to correct, but it is one that the media needs to take responsibility for and act on in order to change consumer behavior and create empathy equity.

As new media forms expand their audience to include people from around the world, the issue of equal emoji representation continues to pop up. Equal representation in emojis sounds semi-trivial, but because the small, cartoonish figures are a regular part of dialogue these days, representation through emojis is just as important as representation in other media platforms.

Recently, a young woman in Saudi Arabia, Rayouf Alhumedhi, called on the Unicode Consortium (the organization which approves keyboard standards) to add a woman wearing a hijab to the emoji keyboard. Without that emoji the 550 million Muslim women that wear hijabs throughout the world are not represented anywhere on the emoji keyboard. The hijab has been a popular topic of conversation recently, especially in Europe where debates about when and where it is acceptable to wear Muslim headscarves have arisen.

This is also not the first time the issue of emoji representation has come up though. Last March there was a widespread call for better representation of women in emoji-form. Instead of brides, dancers and princesses, several women petitioned for representations of women as doctors, businesspeople, and other professional roles.

Increasing the representation of women, different races, and different cultural practices in the emoji keyboard is a small but critical step towards more cultural acceptance and gender equality around the world.

MaryCate Most

Today, the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten published a letter from the editor to Mark Zuckerberg on the front page of their paper. The letter called out Zuckerberg for deleting a Facebook post from the paper that included the iconic photo of children running naked from a Napalm attack during the Vietnam War. This censorship on Facebook and Zuckerberg’s end has huge implications in an era where 61 percent of Millennials and 51 percent of Generation X-ers receive their news from Facebook. Whereas newspaper editors used to be the final “gatekeeper” on world news, social network CEOs like Zuckerberg are now able to make judgment calls about what media consumers should and should not see. In the letter, the Aftenposten editor in chief and CEO, Espen Egil Hansen, says that this kind of censorship makes him “afraid,” calling Zuckerberg “the world’s most powerful editor.” Although Facebook encourages international communication by providing a free and simple tool to connect to individuals around the world, they also bear a a responsibility to remain open and allow free expression of ideas. However, because Facebook is a private company (not a state actor), they have no legal obligation to allow free speech. Their company policies, therefore, become a new kind of media law. Similar issues have risen regarding censored speech on Twitter. In conclusion, the media will need to find ways around the issue of corporate censorship as social media dominates news platforms.