Historicizing Arab blogs: Reflections on the transmission of ideas and information in Middle Eastern history

Abstract

Arab blogs have caught the attention of Middle East watchers. Much of the attention dedicated to them, however, has dealt with their political importance, whether as a mobilizing tool for activists or as an alternative source of news reporting. Blogging is also interesting, however, as a new and perhaps significant departure in the history of media in the Middle East. By this I do not mean “media” in the common late 20th century usage in which it applies primarily to those who work within unidirectional mass media, but rather as a medium of communication. In particular, I am interested in the way media enables and structures relationships between and among senders and receivers of ideas and information, as well as in the mechanisms of reception of messages and the perceptions of media forms and transmitters which circumscribe their authority. This article is not designed to answer such questions, but to raise them through a brief survey of the immediate impacts of new media forms as currently understood by historians. Its approach to the history of technology is that while new media forms can enable certain changes in social practices, both the development of new forms and their utilization and impact are heavily, if not decisively, influenced by cultural, social, economic, and political factors. The intent is to use this survey to provide a general background giving rise to new comparisons and models which scholars may find useful, both in evaluating blogging in the Middle East as an activity and situating it in its historical context. It is necessarily preliminary, as many topics within the history of communication in the region require further investigation.