Reframing the Global South: Media Discourses and the Coloniality of Representation

This ongoing research project examines how Western media represents the Global South and how these representations are shaped by long-standing colonial visual and discursive traditions. Drawing on theorists such as Stuart Hall, Edward Said, Édouard Glissant, and Michel Foucault, I analyze the recurring patterns through which the Global South becomes visible in news coverage: crisis, dependency, suffering, exoticism, and the marginalization of local epistemic authority.

My thesis argues that these patterns are not accidental but part of a broader “coloniality of visibility,” rooted in centuries of travel writing, scientific classification, colonial exhibitions, and early photojournalism. Using a discursive framework, I examine how journalism constructs its objects, assigns meaning, distributes authority, and normalizes certain ways of seeing.

The project then turns toward possible openings for transformation. Building on concepts such as opacity, reflexivity, and hybrid forms, I explore how journalists—especially those working within Western newsrooms—might reconfigure their storytelling practices in small but meaningful ways. This includes making room for partiality and limits, situating one’s own standpoint, and experimenting with narrative forms that resist overexposure and allow complexity to emerge.

This thesis is currently in progress; the full manuscript will be available soon.