Framing new communicative technologies in the Arab world

This article explores how the academic discourses that have arisen out of research into the political and sociocultural impacts of contemporary information and communications technologies in the Arab world both mirror and diverge from similar discourses arising out of language and linguistics research. The authors suggest that there are five central understandings of this impact: discourses of development, emancipation, subordination, adaptation and resistance. Whilst political research focuses mostly on the first three, cultural and linguistic research emphasizes the latter two. The authors argue that the evidence presented here supports a case for a concerted inter-disciplinary approach to the study of ICTs in the region, on the grounds that it offers the best chance to capture the multiple textures and layers of the regional experience.