"Since 2001 the development and use of the nascent mass media environment has been an integral component to the US-led democratization of Afghanistan. This approach is embedded in a history of US-led liberal order building, in which liberal principles and democracy are deployed strategically as mechanisms which not only create political and economic freedoms in previously authoritarian polities, but also limit the contours of social life in ways that are constitutive of US hegemony. Mass media development and use are a part of this conflicted process, providing both an architecture for delimiting the opportunities for political engagement by the bulk of the citizenry and a tool for managing the perceptions of the population in a manner that is congruent with US purposes. This thesis draws on previous research and relevant contemporary policy and practice to elucidate how the US approach to the Afghan mass media environment has functioned to foster liberal order between 2001 and 2010. I map the ways in which current US mass media policy and practice hinder the potential emergence of radical-democratic forms of citizen engagement in order to inform potential ways forward." (Abstract)