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For over two decades, the 'information revolution' in the Middle East has been framed overwhelmingly in terms of media, more of it, and in comparisons to mass media - from the advent of any-to-any communication to ad hoc conceptualizations such as 'crowd-sourcing' or 'citizen journalism' - that register the multiplication of voices, channels and eroding boundaries in spheres of communication. The record has expanded more than conceptualizations of its sociologies in media and communications studies. It's time for other questions that elicit additional and more basic features of Internet practices from choices that shape individual repertoires and participation to continuities between users and producers to how actual practices scale up, which actually link micro and macro processes. To elicit these broader sociologies, and move beyond the limited social physics of 'impact' of the Internet on culture and lifestyles, I draw on the related sociologies of reference group and network theory, on Science-Technology-Society studies and sociolinguistics to bring disruption of existing institutions, on the one hand, and cooptation by them, on the other, into more unified theory of the play of information revolution in culture and lifestyles on the Internet.

Not long ago a MESA Bulletin reader objected to introducing coverage of the Internet, saying that there were few Middle East studies online. However, you do find Middle Easterners. With increasingly accessible technology, there are thousands of websites that are added to listservs and now supplemented by blogs from, by, and about Middle Easterners. The trend has been from witness to participant. Yet the subjective register of the Internet in Middle East and North Africa is often a new example of exceptionalism: less free than in the West, less extensive than in the Far East, slow to grow and stunted when it does, with limited access and high costs that confine it demographically and culturally, not to mention politically. That is also what most comparative measures tell, but those do not measure what is happening. Early interest a decade ago has subsequently faded—or phased—into something more interesting than another story of absences.

The progress of Islam onto the Internet has unfolded as a dialectic of technological and social processes. Diaspora pioneers adept in early Internet technology were followed by activists utilizing Web technologies that made the Internet a publishing medium. Increasingly, postmodern professionals use today's more interactive technology and global networking to build virtual communities around the values, work habits, religious interests and technical practices of pious, modern middle class professionals. Internet communities are being built through those technical practices rooted in work, professions, and valuing professionalism. (Maghreb-Machrek/DÜI)

Analysen über die Auswirkungen des Internet auf Politik und Gesellschaft im Nahen und Mittleren Osten tendieren dazu, die Technologie als unabhängige und exogene Variable anzusehen und deren Einfluss auf den Endnutzer in den Mittelpunkt zu stellen. Ein umfassendes Bild von der kulturellen und sozialen Dimension des Internet ist aber nur zu gewinnen, wenn die sozialen Prozesse einbezogen werden, die stattfinden, bevor Internet und Informationstechnologien zu einer "Kraft" werden und "Einfluss" ausüben. Auch um zu begreifen, wie sich das Internet in der Region ausbreitet und warum seine Verbreitung - zumindest anfänglich - so langsam erfolgt, ist es nötig, nach den Technologie-Akteuren zu fragen - Entwickler, Sponsoren, Organisatoren, Systemplaner, Kontrollinstanzen u.a. (DÜI-Hns)

Materials of Middle East studies and not just for Middle East studies are increasingly appearing on-line. The 'Net (Internet) that brought file archives, newsgroups and mailing lists devoted to regional issues and material has become a publishing medium in the Web (World Wide Web) with more and more of the output of Middle East studies themselves. The Bulletin now has a site, or "homepage," on the World Wide Web at http://www.cua.edu/www/mesabul with select articles from recent issues and connections to material on the MESA Bulletin Gopher.The World Wide Web has been the breakthrough technology for making the Internet user-friendly and mainstream. WWW hides the "computery" aspects of the Internet behind snappy graphics and an easy-to-use interface that together have fostered much recent press and commercial enthusiasm over "the Net," such as:
It's similar to what the library was 100 years ago, or the telegraph. It will be bigger and better than television. We're not talking about a 500-channel medium. We're talking about 250,000 channels that speak across all borders It represents who we are, how we act, transact business and engage in relationships. The Internet is about information empowerment. I think it will change world culture. (Michael Wolff in Investor's Business Daily 21 Sep 95, p. A8)This summer, the number of commercial Internet sites passed those of educational institutions. The Internet, in a sense, has graduated.