Blogging the new Arab public

Blog enthusiasts pinning great hopes upon the transformative impact of online personal Web logs have often seemed to run ahead of political reality.[1] A few years ago, in fact, Arab blogs could easily be written off as a fad, fueled by the novelty of some outspoken female Saudi bloggers and the prominence of some English-language Iraqi blogs in the American political blogosphere. There are still plenty of reasons to believe that blogs will never live up to their hype.[2] Blogging remains the activity of a tiny elite, as only a small minority of the already microscopic fraction of Arabs who regularly use the Internet actually write or read blogs. Blogs reach only a fraction of the audience of Al Jazeera or even of tedious state-dominated newspapers. Where bloggers have been politically influential, such as Egypt and Bahrain, repressive regimes have been able to crack down on them. From this perspective, it is highly unlikely that blogging will induce wide political change in the Middle East. While a healthy skepticism is wise, it would be wrong to conclude that blogging has no role in Arab politics. Arab political blogging is changing and becoming more politically relevant. Bloggers have had a discernible impact in a wide range of Arab countries, including their role in the Kefaya movement in Egypt (see Rania Al Malky in this issue), political protests in Bahrain (see Luke Schleusener), the turbulent post-Al Hariri period in Lebanon (see Sune Haugbolle), anti-corruption campaigns in Libya (see Claudia Gazzini) and the 2006 Kuwaiti elections. While political opportunities usually come first—around elections, national scandals, or contentious elite debates, for instance—blogs can be catalysts for previously unlikely political mobilization.[3] A raft of recent articles have begun to explore the new politics of Arab blogs, especially their role in facilitating new forms of political activism.[4] Mainstream Arab media have taken note as well, as in a breathless segment on Al Jazeera last year dubbed Blogs: the New Opposition Voice in Arab Politics in which veteran journalist Mohammed Hasanayn Haykal declared himself the greatest reader of blogs.[5] Do blogs represent a revolutionary new tool for Arab political mobilization? Can they break the filter of state-controlled media and give both non-Arabs and Arabs themselves direct access to real Arab voices? Can they provide the foundations for a new Arab public sphere?