Interesting article though. Thanks for sharing!

Sara

Try this paper and the references therein by Debraj Ray of NYU
http://www.econ.nyu.edu/user/debraj/Papers/povasp01.pdf

Conservative cultures many times try to control access to modern models of dress and behavior for the fear of change it will bring about through change in tastes I suppose — and tranmission of knowledge (say, about birth control).

According to Olken’s research, in Indonesia, where TV coverage isn’t yet universal, one finds that “better signal reception, which is associ­ated with more time spent watching television and listening to radio, is associated with sub­stantially lower levels of participation in social activities and with lower self-reported measures of trust.” This, he notes, has had a deleterious effect on political and social par­ticipation: “The main results suggest that each additional channel of television reception is associated with 7 percent fewer social groups existing in the village, and with each adult in the village attending 12 per­cent fewer group meetings.” That would seem to confirm Putnam’s thesis. But the results were nuanced. Olken noted that “despite the impact on social capital, improved [TV] reception does not appear to affect village governance, at least as measured by discussions in village-level meetings.”

http://www.american.com/archive/2008/january-february-magazine-contents/graft-paper