Internet Pioneering in Four Arab Countries: The Internet as a Force for Democracy in the Middle East

Jon W. Anderson & Michael C. Hudson

Can the Internet be a force for democracy? In the enthusiasm for all things Web of the 1990s, many thought it could be, and this period coincides with the Internet ‘going public’ throughout much of the Middle East.  Between 1999 and 2002, we conducted a comparative study of Internet implementation in Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. Our study focused on the democratizing potential of the Internet, which we hypothesized would show up among advocates and early adopters and spread through their lateral relations in other sectors. This text is condensed from a final report (in 2003) to United States Institute of Peace, which provided a research grant, and a preliminary version of a planned Occasional Paper in the series published by the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies.

Information Technology and the Arab World (April 2001)

AMBASSADOR ROBERT H. PELLETREAU discusses “Information Technology and the Arab World,” a comparison of developments in the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, at CCAS (April 2001).

Wherever you turn across the broad expanse from Morocco to Iran, governments are opening the doors of their societies to the cyber world and working to remove the underbrush of regulations and restrictions that have impeded the spread of the IT revolution to date.

Arab Information Project Specialist Workshops, 1996

In the year following the Center’s symposium on “The Information Revolution in the Arab World,” CCAS has held a series of follow-on workshops with a grant from GU’s School of Foreign Service that enabled us to bring together Middle East and information specialists from Georgetown and the Washington area. Topics have included

The Internet in the Arab World
Radio and television in Arab countries
Telephone deregulation
Interactivity via the Internet
Assessing audiences for media in the Middle East
Technological convergence
Connecting Morocco to the Internet

Welcome to the Revived AIP!

The Arab Information Project which went “off-line” with the retirement of its server at Georgetown University is back, with an archive of its original material from 1995-2002 and renewed dedication to…

“studying the social, cultural, economic and political life of advanced communication and information technologies in the Middle East and in the “Middle Easts” overseas. The growth of the Internet, direct satellite broadcasting, cellular and other telecommunications systems calls for ongoing analysis of the changing communication and information cultures in the Arab world and the manifold influences conveyed by these new technologies.”

Archived older material will be restored in the coming weeks.