Wednesday, Jun 09, 2010

Gulf News

Ajman The lack of a culture of free speech has contributed to the challenges faced by bloggers in the region, a speaker at the Arab Bloggers Conference said.

Mohammad Talal Badawi, the second speaker at the conference in Ajman, told delegates that he lost a good job opportunity with Saudi Telecom Company owing to critical comments he had posted on his blog a year before applying for the job.

Badawi, an IT engineer who entered the world of blogging owing to his technical background, said no one intends to bring harm upon himself or his family when starting a blog.

He told the meeting of young and professional Arab bloggers that the lack of experience and a free-speech culture would likely result in a situation in which a blogger ends up in trouble.

The two-day conference is being organised by the Department of Culture and Media in Ajman, in cooperation with the General Information Authority and the Abu Dhabi Group of Culture and Arts under the umbrella of the League of Arab States.

No regrets

Badawi said he had never regretted blogging and he always wrote to express his opinion about certain issues. He said his objective was to make things better and added that while he never used criticism to insult others, others would probably feel offended by his views.

Badawi said bloggers were not aiming to end up in prison or in the courts, let alone losing one's job after expressing their views.

He, however, said that owing to differences in views, bloggers were more likely to end up in trouble.

Badawi, who works now for the Royal Commission of Jubail and Yanbu in Saudi Arabia, advised Arab bloggers to follow what he called Hawdaj — a traditional term to describe a special seating device used by travellers on camels in the past.

"Hawdaj is the abbreviation of four Arab words: Hadaf, which translates into a clear objective for establishing and writing in a blog; Wa'ie, which means awareness or consciousness; Dafie, which means the motivation and the fourth word is Jumhour which translates into the public or the audience who receive and interact with the message of the blogger," he said.

According to statistics Arab bloggers form more than 70 per cent of the Arabic language content on the internet, Badawi said.

"This indicates the importance of Arab bloggers since Arabic language is [ranked] sixth amongst the top languages used on the internet," he said.

"We need to educate Arab bloggers and a conference like this might be the right platform to think and ponder [on] how to develop blogging as a new communication and information activity," he added.

Badawi urged the conference to come up with what he termed "Blogging 101" or the basics of blogging.

He said Arab bloggers need to know the basics of blogging before posting their views on the internet.

internet

Essential element

"The internet is the best source of information and broadcasting in the world right now, and it has forced an interaction between those who produce information and those who consume it," said Dr Al Syed Najm, researcher, author and expert on Arab blogging.

Ebrahim Saeed Al Daheri, director-general of the Department of Culture and Media in Ajman, said: "The internet is no longer just a source of entertainment, it is a necessity."

"Perhaps [some] of the best features in the world of information today [are] blogs. Blogging has imposed itself on the scene for its effectiveness and freedom and as a platform for expression and communication and exchange of human experience. Which is why we feel it is necessary to set up this conference."

— Mohammed N. Al Khan,Staff Reporter

By Duraid Al Baik

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