Today Noshir Contractor presented a talk on Metatheoretical perspectives on satellite television and development in India: What we learned – and did not learn – from SITE to inform digital media in contemporary India at the Vikram Sarabhai Birth Centenary Tribute.
Abstract:
In 1988, along with Arvind Singhal and Ev Rogers, I co-authored an article titled Metatheoretical perspectives on satellite television and development in India in the Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media. In that article, we analyzed the role and impact of satellite television from four metatheoretical viewpoints: the utopian view that technology is intrinsically good for humankind, the dystopian view that technology is an unmitigated curse, the neutral view that technology per se has no intrinsic effects on society, and the contingency view that the potentially desirable and undesirable impacts of technology are differentially determined by the context in which the technology is introduced at a particular time.
