The Social Arab – Online Developments of Expression & Vlogging in the Middle East

The evolution of media has gained much headway this past decade and has outpaced many countries’ ability to keep up. It has even left linguistic gaps in the Arabic language, and has sparked one Jordanian, Muhammed Jaradat, to create new Arabic terminology to fill this social media language gap. As internet proliferation increases in Arab countries and access to higher connection speeds becomes available, it allows for the upload of large file sizes in the form of self-created videos.

Using Jordan as a preliminary case study, this paper begins to explore social changes in view of the emerging social networking personalities that are rising in the Arab world, particularly, the influential Arabic speaking identities, musicians, comedians and religious teachers that have made their beginnings through online content, by-passing the traditional route of sponsorship, radio and television.

The self-created content published for the world to view, unfiltered by traditional content monitoring and review methods, is a glimpse into the reality of a level of society that, until recently, has not had the chance or connection to break into the main stream. The cultural expressions and opinions expressed through this new social media is quite unique and understudied, thus a focus on these developments will add to the field of social change in the Arabic speaking populations.