The Muscatis: reBlog: Blog Disparity
The Muscatis have a post (link above) on the differences in blog culture between different countryies in the Gulf. It collects some cogent observations from other bloggers and is generating considerable response in the comments section of the post.
I particularly like the quote from Mahmoud's Den comparing Omani bloggers to UAE bloggers.
Read the whole thing.
04 December, 2005
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2 comments:
Interesting in deed!
I commented this on Mahmood's blog:
I think your comments are accurate on UAE bloggers - but are you referring to English language blogs only? These are the only ones I can read, and nearly all of them are written by expats. And yes - we do moan! But it is fair to say that the situation for most people here has dramatically deteriorated - financially and quality-of-life wise - over the past five years. And that people - expats - are disenfranchised here (fair enough, we're not asking for or expecting any say in local politics) so blogs are an outlet.
Circumstances just aren't happy enough any more for people to shut up and put up with a lot of the problems and frustrations in the UAE. And given it is - Dubai in particular - attempting to be on a level with other developed world centres, then the criticism is both just and necessary. You can't claim to be open and tolerant and progressive and have such draconian censorship laws, for example. Or claim to be a "city that cares" but take no real action over road deaths, or unpaid workers literally starving in appalling labour camps and unable to pay for medical treatment. Newspapers are certainly forcing some action here, it's only to be expected that bloggers are going to express the same sentiments.
I get the impression there are a load more blogs written in Arabic by locals, but sadly have no clue of their content. This guy's blog: http://benkerishan.blogspot.com/ is banned here. Again, it's in Arabic so I am not sure why it's blocked.
There seem to be quite a few local emirati teen blogs in Arabic - certainly teenagers here are hugely active on the web, which is possibly why they keep blocking Flickr (as it's used as a meeting point for young males and females). There also seem to be quite a few young women/mother blogs around, particularly by stay-at-home mothers, which is understandable.
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