Blogging And Freedom

Brian Ulrich:

...blogs have allowed women to participate openly in the same political sphere as men, even in highly segregated societies such as Saudi Arabia...In societies with high internet penetration, blogs can have a democratizing, community-building function.  Although we've seen this in the United States, its occurrence in politically closed societies such as Bahrain is significant because of the nexus of people it can bring together in certain types of interactions.  I don't know all the ramifications that the term "public sphere" has in political science, but it sounds like a local one may have emerged in certain Gulf states of a type that would have been unlikely prior to the internet.