WEF 2022: The World Economic Forum's focus remains the western world

A Business Standard analysis found that the US and the UK top the list of discussions at the World Economic Forum 2022 Annual meeting.

2 min read Last Updated : May 24 2022 | 11:05 PM IST

The World Economic Forum’s 52nd annual meeting kicked-off on May 22 in Davos with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressing a special session asking for higher international cooperation.

While WEF has come to support a wider audience over the years, a Business Standard analysis found that the focus of the meeting is still the developed world.

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Analysis of data from WEF Live shows that the United States remains the most mentioned country in media over the last two years. It was mentioned in 680,365 articles across media highlighting the WEF forum—twice more than the United Kingdom, which found mention in 344,607 articles in the last two years and thrice more than China.

India, the only other developing country, found mention 157,787 times during this period—a fourth of the US’ mentions. Among the top 10 countries, India was ranked sixth, and the mentions for the last five countries combined were still lower than those for the United States.

The situation has been no different in the last seven days. Data shows that even though Ukraine was a hotly debated topic. The US still had twice as many mentions in the media as Ukraine.

This is not just the case for overall media coverage either.

Further analysis shows that the US was the most mentioned country among WEF publications, finding 54 mentions, followed by Ukraine, which was mentioned 30 times in the last seven days. Historically, the US and the UK dominate the WEF publications, followed by France. India was the fifth most mentioned country in WEF publications over the last two years, whereas China occupied third place.

India found mention in 16 WEF publications in the last seven days, whereas China found mention 29 times.

As the world becomes more multi-polar, the WEF will need to change its character and start highlighting and focusing on issues of the developing world.