information and communication technologies (ICTs)

The flow of news between First and Third World nations was deeply imbalanced. Direct broadcast satel- lites posed an even greater threat as their signals spilled over into many countries with televised entertainment, carrying in- formation and culture beyond the power of national governments to counter. The biggest threat to ... [instrumental] power is interruption of communication (Haraway 1991: 164). Haraway, D. (1991). Simians,
Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. London: Free Association.

Since the 2009 green revolution in Iran, social media has become a focus for most commentators on the media in the Middle East. Social media, in broad terms, refers to Internet- based applications that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content. (Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein, Users of the world,
unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media, Business Horizons 53:1 (January 2010): 61.)

Social media, in theory, might help in the creation of communities that want to hold the government accountable, but in practice this is a very difficult task which requires more than simply access to media and technology. (http://www.arabmediasociety.com/articles/downloads/201208260 84958_Lamer_Wiebke.pdf) In societies that value liberal normsdemocraciesthe Internet clearly empowers non- state actors to influence the government. In arenas where liberal norms are not widely acceptedinterstate negotiations and totalitarian governmentsthe Internet has no appreciable effect. Drezner (2010), 39 Drezner, Daniel, Weighing the Scales: The Internets Effect of State-Society Relations, Brown Journal of World Affairs 16:2 (Spring/Summer 2010): 3144

Manovich talks of cultural interfaces or human-computer-culture interfaces which structure the ways in which computers present and allow us to interact with cultural data (2001: 70). For in using computers we are not simply interfacing with a machine but interfacing more broadly with culture, even if this culture is encoded in digital form. Manovich, L. (2001). The Language of New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press.