Satellite Democracy

Satellite Democracy

Democracy Digest draws attention to Dishing Democracy, a recent PBS documentary on the relationship between satellite TV and democratic change. In a piece on the documentary’s website, Marda Dunsky writes that although “the right [to elected government] is not widely enjoyed in the Arab world, democratization in Arab societies has nevertheless taken root — bolstered by media technologies that bypass government control and put the potential for change in the hands of the people.”


 


Because Arab satellite TV is “not hindered by direct state control,” Dunsky sees it as “an agent of indigenous and evolutionary change, Arab satellite broadcasting plays a key role in democratization of the region — and as such is also particularly relevant to American interests and policy goals in the Arab Middle East and, by extension, throughout the Muslim world.


 


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