❊ Rami Khoury Gets It Wrong With Blogging And Social Media

I usually respect Rami Khoury, but he seems clueless in this New York Times article:

We must face the fact that all the new media and hundreds of thousands of young bloggers from Morocco to Iran have not triggered a single significant or lasting change in Arab or Iranian political culture. Not a single one. Zero.

What an astounding statement! Is he serious?

In Egypt, Youtube videos exposed the culture of sexual harassment and “scandalized” Egyptian society and politicians into public debates and legislations. Egyptian bloggers also made a great feat in exposing police brutality and corruption.

In Lebanon a blog brought the matter of treatment of domestic foreign workers into focus, causing intense international scrutiny (by media giants) and inspiring campaigns for treating domestic workers better. Also in Lebanon it was online activists who have forced a debate onto legislation of the Internet transaction law.

Not to mention the biggest example in Lebanon of “new media triggering significant or lasting change in Arab or Iranian political culture”, tayyar.org which remained for a long time the single source of information for many FPM activists and members who were at the time prohibited from practicing politics and are now, partly because of their website big political players in Lebanon.

What is it about the Daily Star (where Rami Khoury usually writes) that makes Luddites out of everyone who touches it? A newspaper so backward it doesn’t even link to its sources in its online version.

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Note: Posts with titles starting with an ❊ (asterisk) are my opinion posts. I used this system to separate long posts from quick links and comments.