From A-lists to webtifadas: Developments in the Lebanese blogosphere 2005-2006

Witnessing the war that engulfed Lebanon in 2006 from the outside was disturbing and frustrating. In the midst of bombing and large-scale displacement of Lebanese civilians, information was hard to get. For people like me with friends and interest in Lebanon, the blogosphere soon became an indispensable addition to the daily dose of BBC and Lebanese media. Blogs simply became the medium of choice for many people outside of Lebanon who wanted to follow and understand the conflict. For Lebanese and other people in Lebanon, blogging offered a unique way to share and discuss their war experience. The war sent the international blogosphere into frantic action and filled chat rooms and postings with heated debate. According to the international blog search engine Technorati, key words during the conflicts, such as Hizbullah and Qana were among the very most requested on the Internet. The blogosphere became not just a space for debate but also for information and alternative views and accounts from the ground, which during previous conflicts in the Middle East has been the privilege of satellite channels. If the first Gulf War in 1991 was CNN’s baptism of fire and the Afghan Invasion in 1998 Al Jazeera’s, the Lebanon War in 2006 has propelled Internet-based journalism, which first appeared during and after the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, from obscurity to the heart of the new Arab public sphere of transnational media. The Lebanon War therefore makes an interesting sampler for wider trends in Middle Eastern blogging and new media. Through a critical discourse analysis of Lebanese blogs from their first stirrings during the “Independence Intifada” of 2005 to the Lebanon War in 2006, this article addresses some of the key concerns in sociological inquiry into new media. Does blogging facilitate rational discourse, respect for opposite opinions and pursuit of the best argument? Can blogs challenge the social authority of old media and in particular the press? If blogs are related to the crafting of new speech genres in other “young” media like mobile phones and emails, what does this new form of expression tell us about social cleavages in the Middle East? To what extent are blogs bourgeois, intellectual properties and to what extent do they reflect non-elite perspectives? And what, if anything, do blogs have to do with democratisation?