New Media, New Audience, New Topics, and New Forms of Censorship in the Middle East

Abstract

The Arab world is generally known as laggard in adopting and utilizing new technologies, and the Internet was no exception. Tunisia was the first Arab country to link to the Internet in 1991 on an experimental level1; the first network connection was introduced in 1992 when Egypt established a 9.6k gateway through France. Then several Arab states started joining the new networked world; however, the pace of Internet diffusion in Arab states was slow for various reasons2. To many Arab States, such as Libya, the Internet is seen as the new arm of colonization; to others, such as Saudi Arabia, questions of morality and culture hindered adoption of Internet; and to still others, such as Syria and Sudan, fear of the Internet’s liberalizing effects on their authoritative regimes slowed its adoption.3