The Wiring of Bhutan: A Test Case for Media Ecology in the Non-Western World

Media ecology arose as a means of exploring the consequences of new modes of communication in the Western world. Although it is premised on the universality of its central precept—that the introduction of a new medium has ecological consequences, leading to total social change—media ecology has rarely been used as a theoretical model for examining the interaction of media and culture in the Third World. Using the Kingdom of Bhutan as a test case, this paper explores the viability and usefulness of the media ecology model for describing, predicting, and controlling media effects in a non-Western, non-capitalist context. A Test Case for Media Ecology in the Non-Western World EDIA ecology is the product of a particular place. It arose as a means of exploring the consequences of the emergence of new modes of communication in those areas of the globe that we refer to as the Western world. Although primarily concerned with social and psychological imbalances arising in the West, media ecology is, as a macro-level analysis, premised upon the universality of its central precept, which is that, like the rabbits set loose in the Australian outback in the mid-19th century, the introduction of a new medium leads to “total change”—change, in other words, which is not merely additive or subtractive but “ecological