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For the issue: Media in the Middle EastProfessor Kristina RiegertMedia Studies Department, Stockholm University Karlavägen 104115 93 Stockholm Sweden Tel. +468 16 3196Email: riegert@jmk.su.se

Professor Gail RamsayDepartment of Linguistics and PhilologyUppsala University Box 635751 26 UppsalaTel. +46 18-471 1092Email: gail.ramsay@lingfil.uu.se,

Kristina Riegert is Professor in Media & Communication Studies, having previously held a lectureship in Journalism and a Ph.D in Political Sciencefrom Stockholm University. Her research interests are globalisation, media coverage of conflict and crisis, the news media’s role in national identity, politics in entertainment television formats, and the relationship between television and digital media.

Gail Ramsay is professor of Arabic at the Department of Linguistics and Philology, Uppsala University. Her field of research is modern Arabic literature and society. She has published extensively on the modern literature of the Gulf region and has paid special attention to women’s literary creativity. Since 2010 she is researching the Arabic blogosphere with professor Kristina Riegert, Stockholm University.

Keywords: blogs, counter-publics, Lebanon, humour

Abstract

This article examines whether the ways Lebanese bloggers blur the

boundaries between the national and transnational, the formal and informal,

and entertainment and politics can be described as counter-publics. We

focus on the ten most popular individual blogs in Lebanon during the time

period April 2009-2010, noting bloggers’ mutual connectivity and links to

online media in Lebanon. We then analyse themes common to these blogs,

focusing specifically on how Lebanese bloggers question the norms and push

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the boundaries of what can be said in the public sphere. While there are

differences between the bloggers – not least due to whether they are

writing in Arabic or English – almost all self-identify as promoting a non-

sectarian society, freedom of expression and they criticize existing

religious, gender and environmental norms. Whether they see themselves as

cosmopolitan or locally-based activists, a significant minority uses humor

and political satire as key elements in their blogs.

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Activists, Individualists and Comics:

The Counter-publicness of Lebanese Blogs

Although the phenomenon of blogging in the Arab world is less

than ten years old, the blogosphere(s) in the region are

growing exponentially and diversifying. Blogs vary from

platforms for individual expression, to news, business and

entertainment sites, to collectivities fostering the formation

of online communities. In International Blogging, Adrienne Russell

notes two themes uniting the various studies in the book: “the

use of blogs to negotiate and articulate identity and, second,

to resist political pressures” (2009, 6). We think these two

themes are intimately interlinked in Arab blogsblogospheres,

but that they come together differently in each societal

context.

Although statisticsDespite unreliable statistics, there is

of no doubt that internet penetration can be unreliablein the

Middle East has risen sharply in the past five years, where

growth is estimated to have tripled from an , the number of

estimated internet users in the Middle East has risen sharply

from about 10%estimated 10% in 2007 in 2007 to 33% in 2011.

(cf. Wheeler 2006; Lynch 2007;

www.internetworldstats.com/stats5.htm). A good deal of this

growth increase is attributed to the so-called “youth bulge” –

referring to the fact that one third of the population in the

Arab world is between 15-29 years old. – which is steadily

attaining higher levels of both education and unemployment.i

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Although online culture is largely still a parallel public

space, rapid media convergence is taking place is rapidly

taking place, not least through the increasing presence of

internet-native forms in the existing mainstream media. That

said, weWe therefore acknowledge thesituate blogging within

the context of convergent media where importance of mobile

phones, other social networking sites, andor satellite

television for changingare changing the face of the Arabic

mediascapes (Sakr 2007; Zayani 2007; Kraidy & Khalil 2009).

This article is based on a larger project that investigates

whether the most linked to and most visited individual

Lebanese, Egyptian and Kuwaiti blogs stretch the boundaries of

the mediated public sphere, identifying and advocating

political, social and cultural life in new and different ways.

Below, we examine whether ten of the most linked to and most

visited Lebanese blogs can be said to form an alternative

public, which seeks to deconstruct “socially dominant

discourses” (Wimmer 2009, 63). We ask how these Lebanese

bloggers see their work and the extent to which they challenge

norms and break taboos in mediated public discourse.

In June 2009, Bruce Etling et al. found 35,000 blogs in the

“Arabic blogosphere”, of which 6,451 of the most connected

ones were analysed. Of these, “several thousand” mixed Arabic,

English and French, but only 16.7% in the cluster they call

the English “bridge” were Arabic speakers living outside the

region, which means that the majority of English-language

bloggers are living in the region. (Etling et al. 2009, 20; Taki

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2010, 158). The comparatively widespread use of English is due

to a number of factors: the initial lack of Arabic-supported

software, the English bias of computer technology, hopes for

greater international visibility (especially with NGOs and

human rights organizations), as well as bloggers’ socio-

economic status and education. Clearly, the availability of

blogs in English cannot be taken to be representative of Arab

blogs in general, just as blogs cannot be taken to be

representative of public opinion in the countries of their

origin. Neither should weWe cannot therefore assume that an

Arabic language blog is based inside its country of origin or

that an English language blog is based outside of it. Choice

of language points to the need to be precise about both

bloggers living in the region and expatriates who blog about

and largely to their former homelands.

The Internet is a transnational mediascape, with networks

and forms of engagement that need investigation and analysis.

Yet transnationalism cannot be taken for granted; available

evidence suggests that Arab blogs tend to be nation-based, not

only because blog aggregators log them this way, but also due

to the emphasis in the blogs themselves on local issues and

everyday life close to bloggers’ experiences (Jurkiewicz

2011a; Etling et al. 2009). This differs from the Arabic

satellite television news channels, which deal with

international politics, Pan-Arab questions, or issues in

“other” countries around the region. Aziz Douai (2009, 142)

found that, aside from the Palestinian issue, certain Islamic

questions and a concern with the lack of basic human rights,

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most blogs deal with domestic issues.

The Top Ten Bloggers and the Lebanese Blogosphere

The Lebanese blogosphere experienced its first real upswing

during the events of 2005 following the assassination of

former Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri, with massive

demonstrations for and against Syrian control over Lebanon –

known respectively as the March 8th and March 14th movements.

A second ‘generation’ of blogs appeared during the Israeli War

of 2006, although a number of these died off eventually (Taki

2010). Since then new blogs appear regularly; less motivated

by momentous events, these third generation bloggers,

especially the English-language ones, appear not to be as

politically inclined as previous generations. The majority of

our chosen Lebanese bloggers belong to this generation, having

started their blogs after 2007.ii

Jurkiewicz (2011a, 44f) has emphasized that blogospheres

are fluid and fleeting – which limits the extent one can speak

of them as stable publics. We agree that the majority of

bloggers tend to be active only during certain periods, with a

much lesser number exhibiting real staying power. Bloggers

tire and drop out from blogging, new blogs are born. We

therefore emphasise that we are speaking about the period when

we chose the blogs (June 2010) and analysed the content (April

1, 2009 –April 30, 2010).

Our choice to focus on the top ten most “popular”

individual Lebanese bloggers was based on the reasoning that

these would make good test cases for the notion of counter-

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publicness, since their popularity indicates that they deal

with issues of interest to the media. “Popular” is defined by

two criteria which were weighed together: the number of

inlinking domains to the blog and the number of visitors. They

are, of course, not representative of the wider Lebanese

blogosphere.

The ecology of blogging is often assumed to be based on

linking behaviour, i.e. to other blogs, twitter, news

websites, forums, video footage, etc. In the course of our

research, we found that Arab blogposts tend to link to others

less often than is common in Western blogs. Furthermore,

mainstream media do not, for a number of reasons, commonly

link to blogs unless the news item is about a certain blog or

the phenomenon of blogging. The modus operandi seems instead

to invite the blogger to write for the media outlet in

question. A blogger will often post that article in her blog,

or link to it. Furthermore, bloggers themselves differ

radically in their linking behavior – with some linking

incessantly and others linking seldom. In the Arab world,

linking behavior could be inhibited by censorship or fear of

government reprisals. Although Lebanon is relatively free of

media censorship, a unique position in the region, the

bloggers we studied still linked more seldom in blogposts than

is common in Western blogs (with the exception of a few

English-language bloggers). The increasing use of Ttwitter as

a means of recommending websites and blogs could be one reason

for this. All this makes it difficult to assess relationships

between the mainstream media and individual bloggers through

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quantitative means alone.

To find our top ten most popular blogs, we gathered a

total of 411 blogs from the Lebanon Aggregator and the Maktoob

portal, and subjected them to a LexiURL Link Impact Search,

which ranks the number of inlinking domains to the blogs

(Thelwall, 2009). The top 100 “most linked to” blogs from this

search were then sorted according to their Alexa ranking.

Alexa (www.alexa.com) is a web traffic analysis site that

ranks and averages visitor statistics for three-month periods.

From this top 30 list combining the criteria of ‘most linked

to’ and the most visited blogs, we then examined the blogs

manually excluding inactive blogs, business blogs or blogs

dominated by advertising, collective blogs, and two French-

language blogs. In practice, this means that 9 of our top ten

blogs are from the top 16 most linked and visited Lebanese

blogs. The majority of these blogs were in English and four in

Arabic. Among the former we chose Angry Arab, +961, Maya’s

Amalgam, Qifa Nabki, and Independence 05 (now called, From

Beirut with Funk); the later included Hummus Nation, Trella’s

Blog, Saghbini/Ninar, and Kharbashat Beirutiyya.iii In order to

get an equal number of Arabic language bloggers, we chose the

next highest ranked Lebanese Arabic blogger, number 26,

Hanibaael. Henceforth, we will refer to the latter as LA

bloggers with the shorthand Hummus, Trella, Kharbashat,

Saghbini and Hanibaael.

Maya’s Amalgam and Independence 05 live in Beirut and work

with IT and web design respectively. Qifa Nabki and Angry Arab

reside in the United States and work within the academic

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system. Both of these are politically oriented, yet were not

as active on environmental issues as the seven blogs based in

Lebanon. Of the LA bloggers, Hummus Nation lives in Canada,

and works as a creative director in advertising. The other

four – Hanibaael, Trella, Kharbashat and Saghbini – are

freelance journalists, photographers or ‘social media

consultants’ based in Beirut. Compared to the bloggers from

academia, they see themselves more as activists, combining

social criticism of various wrongs in the local Lebanese or

regional Arab context with individual creative expression.

Hummus Nation is not an activist nor merely an observer; he

keeps up withblogs about local Lebanese issues,through in

order to parodying and criticizinge them. Angry Arab is an

avowed leftist and the mostmostly transnational in content -

supremely biting and sarcastic - world leaders and the Western

and Arabic media get daily doses of critique.

Language Use in Lebanese Blogs

As noted previously, there are unusually many English-language

blogs in the Lebanese blogosphere due to Lebanese history and

its educational system.iv As Taki found (2010) of other

Lebanese bloggers, the majority of those we interviewed said

that they preferred to use English because it was the language

they felt most comfortable using (see Appendix).

Jurkiewicz (2011b) found that the Lebanese bloggers she

interviewed who blog in Arabic do so as a political statement.

In our own interviews, bloggers said they made a conscious

decision to use Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), although the

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comments section of the blogs often could be in Lebanese

dialect. MSA is the prestigious Arabic script language used in

literature and traditional media throughout the Arab world,

the use of which says something about class and social

standing. The daily language of communication across the Arab

world at home among family members, in the street and in

popular movies and soap operas is however various dialects.v In

Lebanese blogs, the comments section may be in Arabic script,

or in Arabic with Latin letters mixed with numbers to make up

for the Arabic phonemes for which there are no Latin letter

equivalents. This has been dubbed Arabish and seems to have

been computer-inspired.vi All of the LA bloggers selected in

this study write blogposts in MSA or a “journalese” variety of

MSA (Ashtiany 1997, 54-61). Those interviewed Hanibaael,

Kharbashat, Saghbini and Hummus said they blogged in Arabic

because it was a rich language suitable for blogs, they didn’t

feel comfortable with their command of written English, or

that Arabic readers needed to be exposed to the ideas

i Arab Social Media Report 2011, 2.ii Angry Arab started in 2003 and and Independence 05 (FromBeirut with Funk) is one of the second-generation bloggers.iii See Appendix 1 for transliteration from Arabic, the sitesof the bloggers and their real names. iv For some insiders’ views of the Lebanese blogosphere, seehttp://lebanonaggregator.blogspot.com/2010/12/lebanese-blogosphere-facts-figures-of.html or al-Hendi’s (2010)interview with Imad Bazi (Trella).v See Ferguson (1959, 325-340), Somekh (1991), McCarus (2008,238-262) and Bassiouney (2009, 10-19).vi See Palfreyman and al Khalil (2003) or Wikimedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_chat_alphabet and forArabish and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabish.

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expressed in the blog. In Hummus’ case, the use of MSA was

integral to his project of creating irony towards officialdom.

It should be noted however that LA bloggers may also have

posts, or sections of blogposts in English. French may also be

used in English blogs. All this assumes that readers speak

these languages. This mix of languages reflects the hybridity

of Lebanese culture pointed out by Marwan Kraidy, and

demonstrated in television shows like Star Academy (2010,

112).

Alternative Publics and Counter-Publicness

Since we cannot make systematic comparisons between issues in

the mainstream media and our blogs, we compare blogging

content and bloggers' own accounts of their motivations in

relation to commonly accepted public discourse in order assess

these blogs' "counter-publicness". As an alternative public,

the blogs we studied clearly are small-scale means of self-

expression or civic activism, independent from institutional

affiliations and market constraints. As Atton has pointed out,

bloggers demonstrate independence through subjective address

as a marker of authenticity, first-hand experience and

trustworthiness for their readers (2008, 43).

The majority of bloggers we interviewed said that they

started their blogs because they wanted to express themselves,

and the kind of content they were after could not be found in

the mainstream media. Typical of many of our bloggers’ views

was Hanibaael’s statement, “I don’t like mainstream media.

It’s only for the sects in Lebanon and it only talks their

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issues (sic)”.vii Hummus told us that he was “sick of all the

news sites” that he was reading, while Saghbini said that he

needed more “free space”. Although Lebanese bloggers agreed

that freedom of speech in Lebanon is far greater than in the

rest of the Arab world, they expressed frustration at the

constraints of social norms and a confessionally structured

society, both of which hamper free discussion in Lebanese

mainstream media. They considered blogs to be appropriate

forms to discuss taboo subjects in society such as criticizing

or mocking religious doctrines or sects (Saghbini, Hummus),

discussing atheism, agnosticism, homosexuality or paganism

(Hanibaael, Saghbini), sexual problems (Independence 05) or

touchy subjects such as Hizbollah’s arms.

vii See Appendix for details dates and places of blogger interviews.

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Sune Haugbolle proposes that Lebanese blogs were counter-

publics since they “blogs have initiated new forms of

political debate and reporting which challenge the role of the

intellectual establishment as the main defenders of civil

liberties and social critique (2007, 22). Haugbolle’s

conclusion regarding discourse in Lebanese blogs is similar to

that of Eugenia Siapera (2009, 44). She found that Muslim

blogs were far from the Modernist ideal of deliberative

debate; they were places where emotional responses were mixed

with political argument, where different opinions locked horns

and agreed to differ, one in which the blurred boundaries

between the public and the private were not uncontested (2009,

44).. Here Indeed, blogging mixes autobiographical narratives,

political engagement, consumerist critique with poetry and

satire, in a style that privileges the subjective as

authentic, one with an intimate or conversational mode of

address to likeminded, some of which features in the Lebanese

blogs we have studied.

Middle Eastern feminist scholars have employed the notion

of counter-publics to describe women’s participation and

discourse in their own publishing, websites, satellite

television channels and blogs (Matar, 2007; Skalli 2006). Hoda

Elsadda describes how three immensely popular blogs by

Egyptian women broke cultural taboos of making the private

public and functioned as “forums for consciousness raising,

social transformation and political mobilization” (2010: 328).

These blogs were picked up by publishing house Dar al-Shurouq

in Cairo, and re-published and distributed as a new genre – a

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form of blog novel.viii She concludes that by providing women

with fora for alternative literary genres and linguistic

styles, these blogs can be considered a counter-public in

relation to the mainstream Arab literary establishment and

literary canon (2010: 312-315, 328).

However, like Sarah Jurkiewicz we find that the term

counter-public is too broad to use without some adaptations

with respect to the blogosphere generally and the Lebanese

blogosphere specifically (Jurkiewicz 2011a, 27). We note that

Nancy Fraser is often quoted for introducing the concept of

‘subaltern counterpublics’ to critique the Habermasian notion

of an ideal public sphere wherein free and equal individuals

rationally debated topics of common concern. By this, she

meant that in the real world, there existed “parallel

discursive arenas where members of subordinated social groups

invent and circulate counter-discourses to formulate

oppositional interpretations of their identities, interests,

and needs” (1990, 67). Obviously, middle- and upper class

bloggers cannot be ‘subaltern’ in the postcolonial sense of

the word: since they belong to a social class which has given

them an education and multilingualism all of which enable them

to act as subjects (Spivak 1988, 271-313; 1999, 308-310, de

Kock 1992, 45-46; Ramsay 2004, 136).ix We do, however, suggest

that bloggers self-identify as subordinate when voicing their

views and aims in their blogs. Michael Warner suggests,

viii The three novels are ʿĀyza atgawwiz by Ghāda ʿAbd al-ʿĀl, Urzbi-l-laban li-shakhṣayn by Riḥāb Bassām and Ammā hādhihi, fa-raqṣatī anāby Ghāda Muḥammad Maḥmūd.

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A counterpublic maintains at some level,conscious or not, an awareness of itssubordinate status. The cultural horizon againstwhich it marks itself off is not just a generalor wider public, but a dominant one. And theconflict extends not just to ideas or policyquestions, but to the speech genres and modes ofaddress that constitute the public and to thehierarchy among media (Warner 2002, 86).

This awareness of subordinate status is corroborated by

the responses given by the bloggers themselves in our

interviews. To the question: “How would you describe the

attitudes of the authorities towards bloggers?” Various

answers were: “Why should they be afraid of us, bloggers?”,

“Let’s face it. They don’t give a damn” and “They don’t know

what a blog is... Nobody knows what a blog is. People on TV

don’t know anything about the internet”, and “I don’t know if

they even read our blogs”. Others felt the authorities watch

them; one blogger, Hannibael said, “In Lebanon they have

started to follow our blogs... They follow us online. I have aix Jurkiewicz proposes that the Lebanese bloggers are subalterns ”because of the political or religious... views that they express or their sexual orientation” (2011a, 38). This is not in keeping with the recognized postcolonial definition of the term ’subaltern’ which indicates individualssuch as slaves or indigenous populations during colonial timesand in the present day illegal immigrants, foreign workers without work-permits or illiterate refugees in Western exile. These are the subalterns who are unable to act as subjects; they have no access to public venues in which they can expresstheir concerns. As expressed by Spivak (1999, 309), the pivotal question is “Can the Subaltern Vote?” by which she means that a voter (in the nation) can, in the minimal sense of the word, participate in the mobilizing of subalternity into hegemony.

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lot of secret service people on my list”. Hummus Nation, added

that one reason for starting his blog was he that “wanted

something more truthful – more naked.” He was “sick of” the

“condescending language” used in the media such as “cable

channels for TV.” In other words, the Lebanese bloggers in our

study in some ways felt subordinate in terms of being

unimportant or suspect, even monitored, in the eyes of the

authorities.

The “parallel discursive arenas” described by Fraser not

only created their own discourse and their own media, but they

also interacted with and challenged the discourse in the

dominant public sphere. This falls in line with Jeffrey

Wimmer’s (2009, 48-49) structural perspective, which

distinguishes between several levels of counter-publicity:

alternative counter-public sphere (marginalized publics using

campaigns and alternative media to make their voices heard in

the mainstream media), participatory public spheres (movement

owned media), or “media activism” (inter-personal one-off

social interactions). It is the alternative counter-public

sphere as defined by Wimmer that furthers our understanding of

these ten Lebanese blogs taken together. As we demonstrate

below the blogs deal with issues and in a language that makes

clear the ambition to function as alternative publics. The

majority of them use their blogs for social commentary, to

raise awareness of inequalities and corruption, or to target

“coverage of the established mass media in order to enforce

their political standing”, all of which are factors that fall

into Wimmer’s category of an alternative counter-public

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sphere. The question is how this counter-publicness expresses

itself.

Warner (2002) argues that, aside from an awareness of

being subordinate, counter-publics are marked off through

their speech genres and mode of address. Regarding the latter

two, the linguistic situation in Arabic speaking societies

with high (MSA) and low (dialect) varieties of the language

opens up for what Haugbolle deems a ‘playful dimension’, where

“blogs facilitate informal and ‘incorrect’ speech as well as

formal speech genres” (Haugbolle, 2007, 5). Invoking Mikhail

Bakhtin’s notion of heteroglossic speech genres where social

groups marked by age, region, professional, or ‘officialdom’

develop their own discourses, aesthetic styles and world

views, Haugbolle argues that Lebanese blogging undermines high

culture and authoritative language by bringing everyday speech

in this case, the Lebanese spoken variety into the same

space as authoritative voices (ibid. 7, 20).

As part of their strategies, several of the most popular

Lebanese bloggers analyzed below use humor as their method of

social criticism. This in turn, recalls the freedom and

absence of hierarchy Bakhtin describes during the medieval

carnival; where laughter, bodily excess, billingsgate and the

inversion of social roles empowered serfs to temporarily

escape from social norms and expectations (Morris 1994, 199,

213; Bakhtin 1968, 5-17). The blogger employing the most

carnivalesque style of those Lebanese blogs we analysed is

Hummus Nation. The blogger says he plays the role of a court

jester, which enables him to deal with a range of

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controversial subjects. His use of the grotesque can be

exemplified by the heading for the politics section in his

blog, “Siyāsa wa-ʾakl kharā (sic رى Politics and eating) ”(خ��������shit), which is reminiscent of the TV-satire South Park episode,

“Giant Douche and Turd Sandwich” denoting the only two

possible candidates for election. Both employ Bakhtin’s “low”

language of the marketplace with its billingsgate speech to

mock society and its power structures (Thompson 2009, 219-227;

Morris 1994, 203-204). Seeing the Bakhtinian notion of

carnival as a mode of counter-publicness demonstrates how

resistance to existing power relations is done through satire,

irony and sarcasm.

Transnational and Lebanese Themes Common to the Lebanese

Bloggers

Although the size of the Lebanese diaspora far exceeds that of

those living in the country, being based abroad does not

automatically make blog content transnational. Most of the top

ten Lebanese blogs had a local flavor, even when they dealt

with transnational political or cultural issues (except Angry

Arab). Toronto-based Hummus Nation and Boston-based Qifa Nabki

blogged almost exclusively about Lebanese politics, whereas

Beirut-based bloggers Saghbini and Independence 05 were

especially concerned with environmental issues and climate

change. Saghbini, Trella, Hanibaael and Kharbashat are mainly

concerned with freedom of expression and religion, and gender

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equality in Lebanon, but it was rare that this was cased in a

pan-Arab context.

The majority of our bloggers (9 out of 10) exhibiting

counter-publicness could be characterized according to whether

they related to a transnational or to a Lebanese context,

where the former was most often pan-Arab issues. A third

perhaps uniquely Lebanese blogging characteristic that cuts

across this dichotomy is that four of the ten bloggers use

humor or satire as a major element in their blogs.

Transnational themes common to the blogs during our time

period are: a) support for Palestinians/criticism of Israel,

or criticism of how Western and Arab leaders deal with the

Palestinian conflict; or b) criticism of Arab leaders as

illegitimate and responsible for numerous human rights

violations; or c) a concern for climate change and

environmental activism. Lebanese themes that unite the

bloggers are support for constitutional reform of the Lebanese

confessional system and the secularization of the Lebanese

state. For some bloggers, this is accompanied by sharp

criticism of the government and politicians or satire of them

or various religions or sects working in their own interests.

Secondly, gender equality, whether in abstract terms, or in

concrete examples of lack of women’s rights, known abuses (of

foreign maids and prostitutes), or everyday social

expectations about women, is important for many of these

bloggers. A third theme of local environmental problems also

appears to connect to broader transnational issues, such as

climate change.

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Admittedly, there is a certain amount of blurring of the

boundaries between the transnational/national themes in the

blogs, but this itself is interesting. Clearly also, it is

easier to identify if bloggers extend push thethe boundaries

of what can be discussed of what “legitimately” can be said in

the national rather than the transnational mediated space, as

the latter is much larger and more diversified.x For the

analysis below, we draw on the views expressed by Lebanese

bloggers on taboo subjects in their society and to which

extent they write onpush themes critical of power structures

in their blogs.

The Transnational Activists

Regarding transnational themes of criticism of the world

leaders, the Arab media, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and

climate change, we focus on three bloggers, Angry Arab,

Saghbini and Kharbashat.

Angry Arab is a quintessentially transnational leftist

blog – the subject matter is sarcastic criticism of great

power relations in the Arab world, gross injustices, war

crimes, torture, and ridicule of most media outlets and

Lebanese politics. In contrast to the other bloggers, most

posts consist of comments, jibes, criticism or support of what

x Significantly, acceptable ways of depicting the Palestinianissue differ radically between Western media and Arabic-language media making the question of what type of contentshould be seen as ‘counter-public’ much more complicated inthe transnational theme.

21

is written in the links he provides to media or other sites.

While Angry Arab is very critical of Western governments and

Israel, his most biting ridicule is reserved for Arab leaders

– former Prime Minister Saad Hariri is called Mini Hariri, the

King and Queen of Jordan are King Playstation and Queen

YouTube. He often posts pictures of Arab leaders doing

embarrassing things or a caption that interprets the photo in

such a way to mock them. One recurring picture is of the Grand

Mufti of Saudi Arabia with the caption, “… By the way, I do

carry a picture of the Saudi Muftititi on my special travel

laptop just in case I report on his utterances and fatwawawa”

[sic].

Recurring headlines such as “This is Zionism”, “Puppets

of Zionism”, “Zionist propaganda” demonstrate his stance, and

the Palestinian Authority is said to be led by thugs and human

rights violators. He makes a point of exposing who owns and

influences the Arab media, even al-Jazeera, where he has appeared

as a guest.xi The Lebanese newspaper an-Nahar is repeatedly

referred to as “(the right-wing, sectarian Christian, racist

anti-Syrian (people), anti-Palestinian (people) in Lebanon”.

Even more caustic is his comparison of al-Arabiya, a TV channel

owned by the Saudi King Fahd’s brother-in-law, to North Korean

media or “a more crude and vulgar version of the crude and

vulgar media of Saddam Husayn” (June 29, 2009). Well-knownxi http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2010/12/arab-media-and-wikileaks.html. See also,http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2010/12/arab-media.html. http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2009/10/arab-media-and-i.html. http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2011/01/western-media-and-angry-arab.html. Accessed April 26, 2011.

22

Western reporters of the Arab world are named and shamed for

ignorance, including the Independent’s Robert Fisk who is

dismissed as a Hariri supporter, for not speaking Arabic and

therefore never to be trusted to know what he is talking

about. Through his constant criticism of mainstream media,

heads of state, religious leaders, and defence of women and

minorities, Angry Arab sets himself up as an counter-public to

mainstream media. While many observations are not very

different from left-wing publications such as al-Akhbar, his

dripping sarcasm and plague-on-both-your-houses approach mean

that all dictatorial regimes (such as Syria or Iran) are

criticized, unlike left-wing publications.

Another way of dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian

conflict is exemplified by Kharbashat, who is a journalist, a

poet and writer of short stories.xii His inclination towards

literary expression may well be one motivating factor behind

his choice of language – he admires the Arabic language and

does not appreciate “slang”.xiii His main page consists of

eight tabs, each linked to archives, one of which is

“Palestine” (Filasṭīn). This tab leads to a series of maps of

Israel and Palestine with the English caption “The Biggest

Robbery”. The maps show a Palestine losing ground to an

increasingly larger Israel. The essay below the maps reaches

the conclusion that the deletion of Israel will solve a number

of problems in Lebanon. When political stability comes to

Palestine, Lebanon will experience an economic upswing due toxii In 2008 he published a poetry collection, Ikhtārī anti al-ʿunwān(You, girl, choose the title). xiii Kharbashat was interviewed on two occasions. See Appendix.

23

disappearance of sectarian and political pressures and a

“strong state” ensuring “a free, non-politicized economy” will

evolve. With Israel eradicated, he says, the problem of

Hizbollah’s weapons will also disappear.”xiv The Israeli-Arab

conflict about Palestine is combined with Kharbashat’s

literary interest in a post dated July 26, 2009. The text of

this post is entirely a poem which criticises the Arabs for

their lack of concern for Gaza.xv

Saghbini, Hanibaael, Kharbashat, Maya Zankoul,

Independence 05, +961 all post during the fall 2009 about the

upcoming Blog Action Day (October 15, 2009), dealing with

environmental issues, the Copenhagen Summit and its subsequent

failure. Of these, Saghbini is the Lebanese blogger par

excellence in terms of environmentalism and ecological

concern. This theme occupies a more prominent position in his

blog than the Arab-Israeli struggle, a subject that

traditionally has been central in mainstream media in the Arab

world since 1948. His environmental activism is emphasized in

his report on the UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen, December

2009, posted February 5, 2010, which features the slogan:

“Climate change kills… Change before it changes the planet!”

His counter-publicness is emphasized by an attitude of

resistance reminiscent of Bakhtinian billingsgate, in a poster

in the left margin of the main page of his blog which

constitutes a sturdy fist inserted into a green tree with thexiv “Palestine” (Filasṭīn) in http://beirutiyat.wordpress.com/. Accessed February 16, 2011.xv http://beirutiyat.wordpress.com/2009/07/26/page/2/. AccessedJune 22, 2011.

24

caption “The Green Resistance” (al-Muqāwama al-Khaḍrāʾ).xvi

Lebanese Themes: Anti-Sectarianism and Gender Equality

While all the bloggers we interviewed said they were against

the sectarian political system in Lebanon, and a number of

them took part in the Laique Pride demonstrations for a

secular Lebanon, the issue was coupled to some surprising

themes by Hanibaael, Saghbini and Maya Zankoul. Saghbini and

Hanibaael are interested in the question of anti-sectarianism

through offering alternatives such as information on

“paganism”, “pagans in Lebanon” and links to occultist

movements and articles on occultism, mysticism and the pre-

monotheistic religions of the region.

Saghbini couples freedom of religion to ancient religions,

the latter to gender equality. In a series of articles posted

during fall 2009, he argues that human inequality in general

and gender inequality specifically has its roots in the

struggle between the ancient world’s plurality of beliefs and

the Roman patriarchal system of military empire, slave trade

and gladiator sports.xvii In pre-Abrahamic societies, men were

not privileged over women, who were regarded as central for

fertility and creation. This ideal state of equality, personal

choice of deities and religious practices came to an end with

Christianity, then Islam because the pre-monolithic religionsxvi http://saghbini.wordpress.com/2009/10/15/act-or-mourn/ andhttp://saghbini.wordpress.com/.Accessed October 12, 2011.xvii http://saghbini.wordpress.com/2009/11/. Accessed January26, 2011.

25

with numerous deities and modes of worship provided “a social

ground, naturally prepared to accept plurality...” (November

20, 2009). In other words, freedom of religion and gender

equality existed in a time when there was an array of deities

and no religion or gender was privileged over another.

Hanibaael’s view of gender equality is that as long as

Arab societies hold on to patriarchal values, controlling

women from the “cradle to the grave” and regarding them as

“prostitutes”, then, a “Women’s quota is not enough” (al-Kūtā

al-nisāʾiyyah lā takfī). This piece is published together with

a photo of a young woman with a piece of tape covering her

mouth.xviii Most of the parties, he says, are against earmarking

seats for women in the Lebanese parliament (majlis an-nuwāb)

because it may be regarded as “bidʿa” (heresy in Islam) or

because it is not “democratic”. However, quotas for women

would not indicate progress if women continue to be dependent

on the goodwill of men and are not at liberty to act

independently as subjects, he concludes.

Maya’s Amalgam consists of autobiographical illustrations

of the blogger herself in various frustrating or comical

situations of living as a woman in Beirut. Maya Zankoul is

concerned with the causes we recognize from the other

bloggers: the Laique Pride movement, the foreign maid

phenomenon,xix local waste, traffic infrastructure, and corrupt

building codes in Beirut. Zankoul has an unusual take on

gender equality, often posting on social pressures to beautifyxviii http://hanibaael.wordpress.com/2009/05/page/2/. AccessedApril 29, 2011. This post was also published in al-Akhbārmagazine on Wednesday, May 19, 2009.

26

oneself, Lebanese women’s preoccupation with plastic surgery,

or the demeaning use of sexy women in the ubiquitous

billboards of the Beirut environs. Elder generations of female

Lebanese are chided for pigeonholing people’s sect by their

family names (April 24, 2010) or for pressuring women to find

husbands rather than have a career (December 30, 2009).xx

Because Zankoul uses individuals and social situations to

exemplify societal issues, the posts are more socially ironic

than politically rhetorical. Rather than targeting authority

figures, she takes on the unreflective middle and upper class

Lebanese, the kind that populate the mainstream media.

Although, she has appeared a number of times in the Lebanese

media, she says she is framed as a representative of the

Internet generation, and not a feminist critic of upper crust

Lebanese society.xxi

Humor in Lebanese blogs

Since humor plays with social norms and expectations it opens

up spaces to question these norms and expectations. Satire,

parody, sarcasm and irony use word plays to point outxix In a contribution to this discussion, Zankoul enacts a rolereversal where a Sri Lankan maid is the “master” and Maya isthe maid. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-dtxEO3GjA. Thisvideo was produced as part of the Shankactive video workshoporganized by Batoota Films.xx The former post was written in support of the Laique Pridemovement which marches yearly for a secular non-confessionalLebanon, the latter in support of Kolena Laila campaign thatinvited women to blog about various aspects about thedifficulties faced by women. xxi E-chat with Maya Zankoul, April 12, 2011.

27

absurdities and hypocrisies, the difference between the

appearance of things and their ‘real’ nature (Gray, Jones and

Thompson 2010, 9, 11-12). In societies where there is

censorship or strong norms and taboos about what can be said

in public, humor may have a special place. While Lebanon has a

long history of political satire, Qifa Nabki noted that they

were common fare on television and talk shows in Lebanon in

the 1990s.xxii

Angry Arab, Maya Zankoul and Hummus Nation represent very

different blogs that use humor to deal with political or

social issues in very different ways.xxiii All are exceedingly

successful in terms of readers and in attention given to them

in mainstream media. As noted above, Angry Arab is sarcastic,

preoccupied with Western and pan-Arab issues, whereas Zankoul

uses irony to draw the trials and tribulations of middle class

life. Hummus Nation uses the formal script language of MSA,

and the authority that comes with it to mock and criticize

Lebanese officialdom and society. Although he says he is not

completely at ease with MSA, it is integral to his use of

satirical and nonsensical content. The effect of using the

formal Arabic script language in texts with ironic and

nonsensical content is striking satire and even comedy.

Consider the post from May 8, 2009, in the form of a piece of

information from the international airport authority inxxii According Qifa Nabki, Muni3a fi Lubnan, Basmet watan, CIA, La Youmal,Irbit tin7all, and Doumokratieh were among the most well-known. See Appendix1 for interview date. xxiii Qifa Nabki also uses satire news about Lebanese politicsunder his section the Qnion. Since this is a limited aspect ofhis blog, we will concentrate on the other bloggers.

28

Beirut.

Schedule for takeoffs during MayThe International Airport in Beirut has announced its schedule for non-smoking takeoffsduring May which is as follows: Every day except Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday afternoon, Thursday, Friday 5 AM and Saturday evening.xxiv

This post about non-smoking departures from Beirut

International Airport exemplifies nonsensical content

expressed in the lofty linguistic style of MSA and packaged as

an official piece of information by the airport authority. It

also seems to be a critical commentary on the difficulties

that Lebanese authorities have to control smoking despite the

well-known health-hazards connected to this habit.

Another example of the style of Hummus is a post from May

15, 2009 featuring a photo of a fishing net suspended from a

tree in a suburban area where cars are immersed in water. In

the post, Hummus alludes to the common notion that driving a

Mercedes Benz is affiliated with car-borne Arabs who must

negotiate rough topography in large parts of the region.

However, no longer does it suffice with just any Mercedes –

drivers want the latest model with “full options”. This is an

ironic addition to the original “necessity” of driving a car

like the Mercedes. The reader’s attention is thereafter

directed to irrelevant, even ludicrous items requested by the

xxiv http://www.hummusnation.net/2009/05/page/3/ [Accessed February 3, 2011]. The blogger informs the reader that this post has been inspired by the play If it weren’t for time of hope by Ziad Rahbani.

29

Transport Authority in order to retrieve these cars: a record

of family affiliation, baptismal certificate and ten thousand

dollars in cash. Hummus thus calls to mind aspects that weigh

heavily on Lebanese society such as the importance of

confessional and family affiliation, business deals bordering

on bribery involving large transactions in cash, and empty

bureaucratic demands. The irony and comedy of this post is, of

course, emphasized by the formal MSA in which it is expressed.

Concluding Thoughts

In this paper, we examine various ways these ten popular

Lebanese bloggers between 2009-2010 constitute set themselves

up as counter-publicsalternative publics; how through the

choice of transnational and Lebanese themes, and the use of

language and humor exhibit, they exhibit shades of counter-

publicness. Our examples provide evidence of the blurring of

the boundaries between the subjective/vernacular with the

formal/authoritative speech genres in order to criticize

society.

They also gave evidence of feelings of subordination

marginalization in answers to questions regarding the ways

they thought the authorities or “powerful groups in society”

viewed them. Either they felt that the mainstream media and

the authorities were uninformed about blogs, or they felt they

were being monitored by the latter. It should be noted that

the attitude towards the mainstream media holds despite the

fact that Angry Arab, Hanibaael, Kharbashat and Saghbini have

30

all free-lanced for popular leftist newspapers al-Akhbar and the

mainstream newspaper as-Safir. Angry Arab and Maya Zankoul have

also appeared numerous times in the mainstream media, despite

being highly critical of media content. We highlighted

elements of some bloggers’ content and aesthetics in order to

shed light how they express their experiences of counter-

publicness.

We noted the linguistic transnationalism of upper- and

middle class Lebanese, and that the bloggers engage to various

extents in environmental issues and support for human rights

(freedom of religion and gender equality). We demonstrated how

the transnational issues of Angry Arab and Kharbashat differed

from mainstream media discourse and how some bloggers linked

transnational issues to local conditions. Locally, anti-

sectarianism was common to all the bloggers in our study and

we provided some unconventional examples of how bloggers

critiqued religion as well as the impact of sectarianism and

patriarchical norms in society. That satire, irony and sarcasm

constituted integral parts of three blogs (and part of fourth)

points to a Bakhtinian flavour in Lebanese counter-publicness.

Hummus was the most carnivalesque of the bloggers, breaking

taboos of conventional decorum, but also using the official

language of MSA to mock official discourse and Lebanese

everyday life.

With the exception of Angry Arab, tThe Lebanese bloggers

bring up often use both alternative discourse and

transnational themes to critique yet, with the exception of

Angry Arab, this is because they are pushing for social change

31

to various problems in their own society. Especially the LA

language bloggers expressed an awareness of certain normative

religious, social and political issues attributed to

mainstream media that are taboo such as criticism of religious

doctrine, making public one’s atheism, paganism or “anything

that’s not monotheistic”, any overt support for homosexuality,

critique of the President or the army, peace with Israel or

the subject of Hizbollah’s arms. Nevertheless, they feel that

blogging provides them with an amount of freedom of expression

not available in other media outlets. This suggests that they

formthat they see blogging as an emanicapatory space an

alternative counter-public where they express their views and

interests in a variety of unconventional forms and contents.

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Appendix: The Lebanese Bloggers and Interview Dates

35

The top five Lebanese Arabic language blogs were:

1. Waleed Zoghby (Walīd Zughbī), hummusnation.net (Hummus

Nation / Jumhūriyyat al-Ḥummuṣ — ال�حمص ة مهوري�� Interviewed from .(ج��Canada via Skype, December 9, 2010

2. Imad Bazzi (ʿImād Bazzī), trella.org (Mudawwanat Trīlā — ة م�دوي��لا ��ي ر The Arabic meaning of this title is “Trella’s Blog”. Not .(ت�interviewed.

3. Assaad Thebian (Asʿad Dhubyān), beirutiyat.wordpress.com

(Kharbashāt Bayrūtiyya — ة ي� روت! ي� ات ي�% رب!�ش) This title can be .(خ��interpreted as “Beirut Scribbles”.

Interviewed Stockholm, June 1, 2010 and Beirut, November 25,

2010.

4. Tony Saghbini (Ṭōnī Saghbīnī), saghbini.wordpress.com

(Saghbini / Nīnār — ار ن� ي� ,Interviewed in Beirut, November 24 .(ن��2010. Follow-up e-mail from Tony Saghbini, February 5, 2011.

5. Hani Naim (Hānī Naʿīm), hanibaael.wordpress.com

(Hanibaael / Hanībaʿl yatasakkaʿ fī-l-ʾarjāʾ — اء رج�� ي� الا0 شكع� ف� ت عل ن�� ب� ي: .(ه�ن�This title can be interpreted as “Hanibaael loafing about the

grounds”. Interviewed in Beirut, November 26, 2010.

The Top Five English Language Bloggers were:

6. As` ad AbuKhalil, Angry Arab.

http://www.angryarab.blogspot.com/. Not interviewed.

Intermittent email correspondence with author.

7. Maya Zankoul, Maya’s Amalgam. http://www.mayazankoul.com/.

36

Interviewed in Beirut, November 24, 2010.

8. Rami Fayoumi, +961. http://www.plus961.com/. Interviewed in

Beirut, 25 November 2010.

9. Elias Muhanna, Qifa Nabki, http://www.qifanabki.com/

Interviewed from Boston via Skype, 29 January 2011.

10. Lilian Assaf, Independence 05

(http://blog.independence05.com/) renamed From Beirut with

Funk in September 2010 and later moved to

http://blog.funkyozzi.com/. Interviewed in Beirut, 22 November

2010. Liliane also runs one of the largest directories for

Lebanese blogs, the Lebanon Aggregator.

37