Media, democracy and development: Learning from East Timor

How might media function as the infrastructure of democracy and nation building when the basic requirements for life have been devastated by civil war? Students in the School of Media Journalism at the Queensland University of Technology recently confronted this question when they participated in a Project that used the Internet to support the development of an independent press in East Timor. This paper describes the East Timor Press Project (http://www.easttimorpress.qut.edu.au) and assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the Project and reviews the benefits of the Project to the students, site users and East Timorese society. It concludes with observations about how the Project contributes to the effort to develop physical and democratic structures in East Timor, as well as the limitations of the Project.