MDIA3093 Media Power
Week 10: Venture capital—the
political economy of innovation
Collin Chua
C.Chua@unsw.edu.au
MDIA3093, Term 1 2026
Today’s agenda
1. Presentations.
2. VC, monopoly power, bubbles—the political economy
of innovation.
3. Workshopping A3.
MDIA3093, Term 1 2026
Warm-up discussion
oIn small groups, discuss the business model of venture
capital. (Feel free to google this.) How does this connect to
what we have been studying in the course? What’s the point
of looking at the political economy of innovation?
▪Presenters—please sit together. No need to tackle the above;
instead, please get to know each other a bit better, and decide
amongst yourselves the order of your presentations. If you
have a slide deck, please make sure it’s ready to go.
Presentations will proceed after this warm-up.
MDIA3093, Term 1 2026
Presentations
❖Format. Each presentation
will have five minutes. At
the end of all the
presentations, we will have
Q&A time.
MDIA3093, Term 1 2026
Why look at
VC?
• “…highlighting the financial actors
behind tech revolutions is long
overdue.” (Peters, 2023)
MDIA3093, Term 1 2026
Why look at
VC?
• “Whenever we try to get to the
bottom of digital power and start
tracing the steps that companies
took towards becoming so
dominant, we need to address the
question: How was this financed?”
(Peters, 2023)
MDIA3093, Term 1 2026
The two
themes for
this week.
1. The VC industry encourages
monopolisation. How? Why? So,
what happens?
2. Venture capital encourages,
exacerbates, and participates in
speculative market bubbles,
particularly in technology sectors.
Why? How? What are the
concerns?
MDIA3093, Term 1 2026
Today’s case study.
• Let’s watch this together:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zE4gvJFOm0
(search: YouTube; What is character.ai)
• Andreessen Horowitz is one of the VC investors:
https://a16z.com/announcement/investing-in-character-ai/
(search: Sarah Wang; investing in character.ai)
• But there have been problems:
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/characterai-lawsuit-
florida-teen-death-rcna176791 (search: Angela Yang;
lawsuit claims character.ai)
MDIA3093, Term 1 2026
Small group exercise.
• Read these two articles for yourself.
ohttps://omr.com/en/daily/character-ai-story (search: Peterson,
character.ai, business model)
ohttps://www.axios.com/2024/08/05/google-characterai-
venture-capital (search: Axios, Google’s deal for character.ai)
1. Why does venture capital shape the development of AI?
2. How will AI be monetised?
3. What will be disrupted?
4. Who will emerge as the winners—and at what cost?
MDIA3093, Term 1 2026
Final workshop session for A3.
oTo ‘workshop ideas’ means to collaboratively explore,
refine, and improve ideas through a structured process,
often involving a group of people, brainstorming, and
constructive feedback.
MDIA3093, Term 1 2026
Feedback on the course.
• Thank you, if you have already completed your
MyExperience survey.
• If you haven’t yet—we would really appreciate if you can
provide us with this formal feedback.
MDIA3093, Term 1 2026
Now, we’d like to ask you for some
informal feedback on the course.
Please take a few minutes to first discuss in your
small groups.
1. What worked well? What did you enjoy? What do
you feel are course strengths?
2. What didn’t work well? What did you not enjoy?
What do you think are course weaknesses?
3. Any suggestions for improving or changing the
course?
MDIA3093, Term 1 2026
Thank you for being part of
MDIA3093 Media Power
this term.
MDIA3093, Term 1 2026

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