I came across an extremely interesting study of the Arabic blogging universe. The study, from Harvard University’s Berkman Center Internet & Democracy Project, looks at the demographics of Arab bloggers, the makeup of the Arabic online media ‘ecosystem’, and perceptions of the US.

The study, “Mapping the Arabic Blogosphere: Politics, Culture, and Dissent,” is reported in a 62-page PDF document retrievable at this link. An executive summary in the form of a press release is here.

Of note, Saudi bloggers represent the second largest group, following Egypt.

A larger version of the above image can be found here.

Internet & Democracy project release study
of the Arabic blogosphere

It is with great pleasure that the Berkman Center announces a major research release from the Internet & Democracy project: “Mapping the Arabic Blogosphere: Politics, Culture and Dissent.”

“Mapping the Arabic Blogosphere” utilizes a unique methodology that blends link analysis, term frequency analysis, and human coding of individual blogs to investigate the online discussions taking place across the Middle East and North Africa. Internet & Democracy project director Bruce Etling and his team, with Morningside Analytics founder and Berkman affiliate John Kelly, and co-authors Robert Faris and John Palfrey, identified a base network of approximately 35,000 active blogs (about half as many as found in their previous study of the Persian blogosphere), created a network map of the 6,000 most connected blogs, and with a group of Arabic speakers hand coded 4,000 blogs. Congratulations and thanks to all who collaborated on this significant work!

The goal for the study was to produce a baseline assessment of the networked public sphere in the Arab Middle East, and its relationship to a range of emergent issues, including politics, media, religion, culture, and international affairs. Whereas the previous study of the Persian blogosphere revealed a network organized primarily around political ideologies and topical issues, such as reformist and conservative politics, religion, and poetry, the Arabic blogosphere is organized primarily around countries. Moreover, personal life and local issues are the most important topics of discussion: most bloggers write mainly personal, diary-style observations, but when writing about politics, bloggers tend to focus on issues within their own country. Bloggers link to Web 2.0 sites like YouTube and Wikipedia (English and Arabic versions) more than other sources of information and news available on the Internet. The overall picture is one of country-based groupings of blogs focused on domestic issues.
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Coincidentally, three of the study’s four authors have an op-ed in today’s Washington Post. The piece is about what’s happening in Iran right now. While the unrest is being broadly reported through social networking media like Twitter and Facebook, one should not anticipate that those media will actually make much of a difference when it comes down to the streets of Tehran. Worse, by acting as an outlet for political frustration, their use may even work against reformers who need people on the streets. Definitely worth reading!

Reading Twitter in Tehran?