The Premises and Promises
of Satellite Democracies

Anker Brink Lund, CBS International Center for Business and Politics

Technically speaking, satellite communications represent trans-national channels for diffusion of news and views. Taking the clue from Hallin & Mancini´s 2004-book Comparing Media Systems, however, the political impact is translated in national contexts. In so doing, newsworthy sources and dramatic narratives constitute institutional conditions for mediated politics. Satellite operators do not control the processes in splendid isolation. They share the editorial power of definition with traditional political institutions (political parties, representative bodies) and domesticated journalists acting as proxy citizens in what I have termed Institutions of Current Affairs (ICAs).

Scholarship viewing news media as a political institution has primarily done so in a national context on the level of individual media organizations (broadsheets, tabloids, commercial and public service broadcasting etc). It may be argued, however, that satellite communications (and the world wide web) must be analyzed at the genetic level of ICAs. The argument behind this institutional approach is that media organizations may regard themselves as national in scope, but for all practical purposes they operate within trans-national business systems limiting the autonomy of professional conduct. This becomes particularly clear in areas of new technology where political and commercial structures are in flux.

Jan Stenbeck, the founder of Modern Times Group, who introduced commercial satellite television in a Scandinavian context, evaluated the current premises for institutional media competitiveness by referring to the popular game ”rock, paper, scissors” where paper engulfs the rock, the scissors cuts the paper, and the stone destroys the scissors: Individual media businesses (national rocks) have never acted as absolutely free agents in the media market. Business interests are regularly trumped by political regulation (paper). Global, technological development (scissors) can, on the other hand, make national regulation of the market superfluous as we have already seen with satellite television, web media and mobile telephony. But – as Stenbeck concluded – no new technology can be implemented without capital. So in the end business interests (the multinational rocks) dictate the terms of satellite democracy.

If Stenbeck is right, it is economic interests that prime and frame democratic actors in the internationalised media competition. Lately, however, satellite communications has also become political instruments of cultural spinning beyond national frontiers. The extent and consequences of these trans-national power relations have not been convincingly studied in terms of democratic action and media management. Consequently, we are left with exciting research opportunities. In order to bridge the current gap between the narrowly national and heavily generalised global approaches to the emerging fields of scholarship I shall briefly address these research questions:

1. How do we measure and evaluate the democratic impact of satellite communications?
2.  Does satellite television create new arenas for democratic action?
3.  In what way does this development influence the actors of national democracy?