Structural Media Capture: Rethinking media in the Global South

This article develops Structural Media Capture (SMC) as a theoretical framework for rethinking media power in postcolonial settings. Challenging the universalization of liberal-democratic normative models of the press, it advances a de-Westernizing approach that situates media development within historically specific institutional trajectories rather than universal ideals. The article theorizes from Morocco, with comparative reference to the Arab media context, and identifies three overlapping configurations of capture: post-independence state consolidation, market-driven economic dependency, and platform-based infrastructural control. Its central claim is that these configurations interact and accumulate, producing a layered architecture of media constraint. SMC does more than aggregate accounts of political, economic, or platform domination. It reconceptualizes media capture as a path-dependent and multi-level formation through which older regimes of control persist within newer institutional arrangements. In doing so, the article offers a historically grounded grammar for comparative media theory and proposes a framework for analysis across Global South contexts.