MEDIA AND POLT

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My time at Northwestern and Georgetown led me to examine my role as an ex-pat

student journalist, especially when working around topics like migration and inequality. The

resulting Media and Politics minor is also a welcome addition to a fulfilling student journalism experience. My approach to my field was augmented by the language I gained from the politics courses as well as the technical skills I could incorporate from the media side. At the same time, the courses I have chosen to take have in some way, helped me to reflect on the themes mentioned above. While my interest in this intersection was not new, I was able to conduct onfield interviews and documentary videos with sensitivity. These interviews were mostly focused on beats like labor, business, and culture. Therefore, my journalism courses were just as influential in creating my understanding of media and politics as the courses I specifically took for this minor.

 

As an Ethiopian student, working around the themes of migration and inequality was

keenly important to me during my stay at these universities. Not only were there wars in my country that have displaced many people but there is also a sizable Ethiopian population in Qatar that had created a community. This community had its concerns and practices and was perceived by the local and Ethiopian media in certain ways. Despite ethnic conflicts back home, the communal experience of this community was intact. And my experience interviewing my community and some others including a Kenyan and a Nepali one was very important to this minor.

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One of my first short videos examined how labor workers in Qatar used street cricket as

a bonding experience due to the absence of a local and well-funded league. As I just started

practicing journalism, the media theory classes as well as the practical ones I took were very

important in transmitting the message I wanted. One such course was Media Representation

and Analysis. This was the course where I learned how important technical decisions like

cinematography, lighting, sound, and mis-en-scene are. Often, audiences take for granted

carefully curated shots designed to elicit certain feelings. But the decisions making and choices behind most of these shots reinforce messages that film and documentary makers want to communicate. I was especially interested when these messages turned out to be political. From animated movies like Persepolis where freeing and exaggerated aspects of the medium compliment a rebellious Iranian teenager’s imagination to documentaries like The Square where on-the-ground stories humanize participants of the Arab Spring protests, I learned how to infuse messages into mediums. Translating the theoretical work to practical, my newfound understanding of negative space, juxtaposition, and shot styles were crucial in successfully conveying the beauty of cricket, the camaraderie amongst fellow countrymen, and the financial support and appeal they needed so that they could maintain this.

 

 

On the other hand, I was also able to better my political understanding from some of the courses I took to. In my first years of undergraduate studies, the leader of my country Abiy Ahmed would quickly entice local and foreign media with populist and pseudo-inclusive narratives to earn a Nobel Prize that would later be tainted by the war he waged against ethnic groups.  The idea of political influence, crafting narratives, and demagoguery was the focus of one such course I took: Contemporary American Politics. While it was focused on political voice and representation of America, I couldn’t help but draw parallels with the Ethiopian situation. After outlining the nature of democracy, we learned about other political philosophies, foreign affairs policies, and, importantly, whose voice gets heard in late-stage capitalism. The module was focused on following senate races and how candidates portray themselves in the media. So, each of us was assigned candidates whose positioning, campaign finance, and promises we studied. My candidate Florida’s Ron DeSantis campaigned by casting himself as an “outsider ready to upend the status quo” and one of the key reasons he defeated an incumbent senator was the populist ways he gained visibility and mobilization. I continued to draw parallels to the leader of my country (Abiy Ahmed) who also used rosy language and nationalist ideologies, upending old incumbent leaders and eventually being a tyrant himself. Tying to the theme of migration and inequality both Ron and Abiy built their campaigns on sizable but minority outsiders (Cuban Americans for Ron and Oromos for Abiy). They both didn’t keep all of their promises to these outsiders and yet they continued to position themselves as inclusive leaders.

 

My educational experiences opened me up to more dispiriting realizations on the lack of

social mobility and acceptance of conferred dominance to outsider populations. I had an

opportunity to write two business-related articles that both show the discontent of workers in a hyper-capitalist system. In Qatar, my article was about the expansion of Uber in 2019 which saw it take a bigger cut from its drivers (from 15% to 25%), expand its cars despite no demand and increase cannibalizing competition which saw overworked drivers averaging 14-hour-a-day shifts. In Ethiopia, it was textile workers in an industrial park who work for less than a livable wage of 62 USD per month. Interestingly both workers are migrants who either moved from rural to urban areas or from country to country looking for better opportunities. This idea of entrenched systemic inequity and exploitation was very much the focus of another one of my media and politics classes: Inequality in Democracy. It was concerned with deconstructing the myth of meritocracy. Specific issues, such as income and wealth, education, housing, employment, immigration, criminal justice, and health, were explored through a comparative and critical perspective, especially considering minority and immigrant populations who are often redlined, gerrymandered, and excluded. While the focus was mostly on America, these concepts were easily translatable to the migrant populations of Qatar or even Ethiopia whose voices and concerns are treated as marginal.

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Interestingly this unequal treatment and marginalization were not just limited to the

migrant population. In my internship with Doha News through the 2021 Shura Elections, I was

able to navigate how some Qataris may feel excluded and systemically cut out. Especially the Al-Murrah tribe, which has had an uneasy relationship with the royal family, had complaints about the redefinition of who gets to vote in these elections as they felt they were targeted. Reporting on this issue wouldn’t have been possible without both my Media Law and Gulf Politics classes. In the Media Law class, I have learned to be more critical of social media sources. In this case, the hashtag that started the conversation was by a Saudi man amid the blockade crisis who wouldn’t have qualified for any citizenship and wanted to stir up discontent. But then, in the Gulf Politics class, I learned that this discontent does stem from perceived inequity after this tribe was accused of a coup a few decades back. So, the holistic, both-sided understanding that guided my eventual coverage of the topic wouldn’t have been possible without the course instructions through the minor.

 

That said, on the topic of migration and inequality, another angle I kept coming back to was how these individuals solve their problems. One such way was how they cope by forming communities. My Documentary Production and Mobile Journalism classes have both shown me support systems that exist that are based on shared identities. I was able to document shared spaces of Ethiopian women domestic workers who take their monthly day off in a system they call ijaza. This is where they rent a house from another Ethiopian in the community and coordinate their time-offs to be on the same day so that a dozen of them can spend their time together drinking coffee, making bread, and popcorn, praying, and reminiscing about back home. On the other hand, this community building also extends to people in need. I was able to document how the Ethiopian community came through for a cancer patient who was abused by her employer: by giving her shelter, a support system, and even monetary assistance.

 

Instead of being a passive observer, my Media and Politics course also allowed me to

take charge of some of the issues that affected my community. With the help of Dr. Cochrane, Mitchell, and the Global Engagement and Service team, I had an opportunity to have minimal impact in the community I am from through a Service Trip organized by Northwestern. In it, I had the chance to critically look at saviorism and development work. Part of my learning experience around inequality was how empowering and sustainable bottom-up solutions can sometimes work. With that in mind, I participated in an NGO that established a micro-finance institution for a local community. This microfinance organization acted like a bank and was run by the local farming community. The farmers there didn’t have much access to credit because they didn’t have collateral. Even if they did, they didn’t trust the national banks or the government which allegedly harassed, attacked, and forcibly resettled them. With these ethnic tensions and inequalities in mind, the NGO I worked with Foundations for Sustainable Development arranged for a system of mutual accountability where a pool of money that everyone contributes to is loaned out at a below-market interest rate. I was responsible for designing ledgers and constitutions that govern this and it remains active today with millions in its deposits. Of course, none of this would have been possible had it not been for the understanding of my continent's situation I mastered through classes like African Politico-Economic History and my independent study about my country. This is where I learned more about neo-colonization through debt from the Bretton Woods institutions and the IMF. I also learned about trade networks, associations, and treaties within Africa that are managing to curb inequalities. This class was accompanied by a lot of talks that we had to attend all over Doha; one of which was incidentally about Challenges to Food Security in Ethiopia presented by HBKU’s Dr. Cochrane which talked about vulnerabilities and ways of raising capital.

 

Overall, I feel like my experience with this minor coupled with my journalism degree has

helped me understand the world better (especially as it has to do with inclusion and exclusion). It has also definitely shown me the kind of work I can continue to do and has given me the language necessary to do it.