Other writers such as Edward Said have linked issues of representation to the exercise of power. Said argues that "the Orient" was formulated in the minds of Europeans to possess characteristics that were based not in a search for truth but in a desire to dominate, and he was mostly concerned with how these stereotypes, which could serve not only to oppress but also to romanticize or patronize, were projected and reproduced through scholarship and culture.

Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, loc. 262