Blogging in Arab countries

The impacts of blogging and social media in general are widely debated. From an optimistic point of view they are often acclaimed as having democratising potential and described as important instruments to replace authoritarian regimes and to support democracy and freedom.[3] The active use of the Internet can provide a more intense democratic participation and will support a direct form of democracy.[4] The Israeli-American scholar Yochai Benkler, whose notion is typically discussed in this context, sees the Internet as an important benefit for individual independence and freedom. He describes the networked public sphere as an online space where citizens can cooperate, exchange their opinions and collaborate as guardians over the society.[2] In countries where political themes in public are still not welcome, blogging became an important instrument for citizen to express their opinion relating to political developments. Blogging provides a platform for the exchange of information and for political mobilisation that is difficult to control by governments. In countries where media are centrally controlled the Internet breaks the monopoly of communication that was confined to the government and enables each citizen to become a political broadcaster.[5]

The American legal scholar Cass Sunstein has a much more critical view of the Internet’s impact. He argues that the Internet and the use of social media tend to produce echo chambers where people with similar interests classify into small groups of likeminded. This leads to polarisation and divisions within society, since citizens disregard the information and news that do not fit in their pre-existing notions.[6] Scholar Kristin Lord also represents a pessimistic perspective on the Internet and the assumption that it brings peace and democracy. Lord argues that the new media’s channels, for instance blogs also transmit damaging and false information and spread hate and conflict as easily as peace and democracy.[7]

The first country in the Arab world with Internet access was Kuwait in 1991. All other Arab countries followed suit in the next years until 2000.[8]

Compared to other media which are often controlled by the government, the Internet gives its users access to many news source they are interested in. In this sense the Internet can be seen as a democratic medium that enables people to make their views public.[2] The introduction of Web 2.0 in recent years increased the democratic effects since it provides its users an active use and participation. The Web 2.0 applications made the revolution of blogging possible.[9] Initially a few bloggers, who wrote predominantly in English initiated the Arab blogosphere. Within a short time many people followed the blog entries and noted the advantages of blogging. Blogging enables people to spread their opinions faster than governments can control or censor it. Thereby citizens can obtain information that are usually not discussed in public and exchange their opinion concerning several themes.[10] Like their global counterparts, Arab bloggers are not necessarily journalists. Each citizen with Internet access has the possibility to produce blog entries.
In 2003 the war in Iraq caused many bloggers to write about the local situation. The Iraqi architect Salam Pax, who daily wrote about the war horror is the most prominent of these pioneers. Salam Pax and other pioneers inspired an explosion of bloggers who expressed their opinions on themes that were usually not discussed in public. Blogs became increasingly an alternative to newspapers and television. After the technology for Arabic language writing improved and became more available, many bloggers start to blog in Arabic. Since then blogging is increasingly used in the Arab world. In 2006 approximately 40.000 blogs exist in the Arabic blogosphere and the number is still growing.[11]

The Arab uprisings in 2011 have shown that bloggers can act as agents of change. Bloggers were effective in spreading information, mobilising citizens and circulating audio-visual materials about the excesses of government and their security forces.[12]

In 2009 the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University analysed the Arabic language blogosphere to investigate the impact of the Internet on democratic processes in countries with oppressive and authoritarian regimes. The Arabic blogosphere is a complex network that include bloggers from Arabic speaking countries and Arab expats living in the United States, South America or Europe. The findings of the study “Mapping the Arabic blogosphere: politics and dissent online“ indicate that in part of the Arabic blogosphere there is an emerging networked public sphere where citizens obtain information they are interested in and exchange their opinion concerning several topics.[13]

For the analysis the researchers used a methodical combination of social network analysis of the linking behaviour of Arab bloggers, automated text analysis of blog content and human coding of individual blogs. The research group analysed the structure and content of approximately 35.000 Arabic blogs collected between March 2008 and April 2009 and identified the most connected ones. Hence 6451 blogs were left, which represent the structural and conversational core of the Arabic blogosphere. Afterwards they divided the most connected blogs into different attentive clusters and they used text-mining techniques to identify the themes which interest each of the cluster. Furthermore a team of Arabic speaking researchers conducted exploratory human coding of thousands of blogs to get more qualitative information about the blog content.[14]

The researchers identified the below-mentioned topics that are overall discussed in the Arabic blogosphere.

• Local issues - bloggers in the Arab world pay more attention to their own local and national news and politics than to international news and politics. When they discuss their leaders they are more likely to criticise than to support them. Palestine and in particular the situation in Gaza is the most discussed political issue in the Arab world.[15]
• Religion - religious issues are very popular in the Arabic blogosphere. Bloggers exchange mainly their religious thoughts and experiences, while political and theological aspects are secondary.[16]
• Human Rights and Culture - human rights concerning civil and political issues are frequently discussed across the Arabic blogosphere followed by cultural topics, poetry, art, and pop culture.[16]
• The United States - the USA and its wars in Iraq or Afghanistan is not frequently discussed in the Arabic blogosphere. When bloggers write about the USA it is mainly in critical terms. The English Bridge and the Syrian cluster contain the most discussion of the USA.[15]
• Terrorism - when discussing terrorism Arab bloggers are mainly critical of violent extremists. Only a very small proportion of bloggers express explicit support for terrorism. In general terrorism is more discussed in the Levantine/English Bridge and the Syrian cluster than others where it is not an important topic.[15]

• Age - Arab bloggers are predominantly young. About 75% of bloggers are younger than 35, while just 9% are older than 35 and almost none are older than 60 years of age.[16]
• Gender - bloggers in the Arabic blogosphere tend to be male. 60% of bloggers are male, while only 34% are female. The highest proportion of men features the Maghreb/French Bridge (90% M) and the Syrian (87% M) clusters, while the Egyptian youth (47% F) sub-cluster contains the highest proportion of female bloggers.[16]
• Anonymity - Altogether Arab bloggers are more likely to use their name when writing than to write anonymously or with an obvious pseudonym. In fact 64% of bloggers use their name when blogging, while only 36% write anonymously.[16]

The results of the study show a formation of nation-based clusters in the Arabic blogosphere. In this context a cluster can be described as a matched bundle of blogs with similar blog content and links to same online sources. The primary clusters that can be found in the Arabic blogosphere are summarised in the below-mentioned table. The table illustrates the main content of each cluster and demographic data about the bloggers in each cluster.[17]

• Aday, S., Farrell, H., Lynch, M., Sides, J., Kelly, J. & Zuckerman, E. (2010). Blogs and Bullets: New Media in Contentious Politics. Retrieved from:http://www.usip.org/files/resources/pw65.pdf.
• Ameripour, A., Nicholson, B. & Newman, M. (2009). Internet Usage Under Authoritarian Regimes: Conviviality, Community, Blogging and Online Campaigning in Iran. Retrieved from: http://www.sed.manchester.ac.uk/idpm/research/publications/wp/di/di_wp43.htm.
• Benkler, Y. (2006). The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Etling, B., Kelly, J., Faris, R., & Palfrey, J. (2010). Mapping the Arabic blogosphere: politics and dissent online. Berkman Center for Internet and Society and Internet & Democracy Project, Harvard Law School.
• Hague, B. & Loader, B. (1999). Digital Democracy: Discourse and Decision Making in the Information Age. London: Routledge.
• Lord, K. (2006). The Perils and Promise of Global Transparency: Why the Information Revolution May Not Lead to Security, Democracy, or Peace. Albany: SUNY Press.
• Sunstein, C. (2001). The Daily We. Boston Review. Retrieved from: https://web.archive.org/web/20090809083436/http://www.bostonreview.net//BR26.3//sunstein.html.
• Karolak, M. (2011). Civil Society and Web 2.0 Technology: Social Media in Bahrain. Retrieved from: http://www.arabmediasociety.com/topics/index.php?t_article=323
• Rasha, A. (2010). Arab Media over the Past Twenty Years: Opportunities and Challenges. In Bahgat, K. (Ed), The Changing Middle East. A New Look at Regional Dynamics. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press.
• Hamdy, N. (2009). Arab Citizen Journalism in Action: Challenging Mainstream Media Authorities and Media Laws. Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture, Vol. 6, No1.
• ltantawy, N., & Wiest, J. B. (2011). Social Media in the Egyptian Revolution: Reconsidering Resource Mobilization Theory. International Journal of Communication, 5, pp. 1207–1224.