CIAO DATE: 7/04

People / Networks / Power
Communications Technologies and the New International Politics

Abstract

Kurdish people living in Turkey can now receive satellite television broadcasts emanating from London. Iranians can view Farsi-language television programs that originate in Los Angeles. Even though they are dispersed throughout the world, emigrants from mainland China remain a vital diasporic community, thanks to websites and e–mail discussion lists. Insurgent movements from the Zapatistas to the East Timorese to Indonesian students have used the Internet to organize themselves and communicate a political vision to the world.

Yet despite the winds of change stimulated by fresh and unfettered flows of information, the new communications technologies do not necessarily usher in new, more enlightened political orders. Authoritarian governments from China to Saudi Arabia have imposed new systems of control over the Internet. It is unclear, over the long term, just how powerful Internet–based communications will be in reshaping the exercise of power.

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