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The 99 are a group of superheroes created by Naif Al-Mutawa as a way of reframing the discourse surrounding Islam in the aftermath of 9/11. The cartoon is of particular interest, having been successfully distributed in the Middle East, Australia, Ireland, Turkey, India and south-east Asia. Both the cartoon and the comic are surrounded by a discourse of quality, with publicity frequently emphasising the use of established writers and artists who have worked on well-known Western products, and are for the most part from America, not the Middle East. However the cartoon has not been globally successful, having been rejected in America and the UK. It appears that its origins as a cartoon from the Middle East and more importantly its connections to Islam, are part of the reason for this rejection. This chapter will examine the American online response by bloggers, in particular the discussion surrounding Sharia law and characters who wear the hijab.

This chapter focuses on how the rise of social media has transformed media events. First, it considers the characteristics of the Web 2.0 era before considerin how the Olympic industry has organized its response to this new communication architecture. Next, it explores the risks of social media to the financial base of the Games, considering how to monetize Olympic social-media content. Subsequent sections in this chapter consider the risks of open media, the expansion of the user experience by digital technology, and the parallels between open-source volunteers and the Olympic volunteer ethos. In so doing, the chapter articulates a vision for digital culture that is born out of the values of social media, as an ideological force that coheres with the Olympic vision and with a broad perspective on the potential contribution of sports in society.

This chapter examines one of the newest modes of life-writing – personal internet blogs. Cyber-writing, in its increasing diversity of form, offers perhaps the most dynamic mode of autobiographical construction. Firstly, blogging culture has fundamentally altered the very nature of autobiographical narration in that it put authors and their readers in direct communication, often in real time. Secondly, no longer a retrospective prose, cyber autobiographical writing has become the voice of Arab youth. This chapter explores and theorizes the genre of autoblography using Ghada Abd al-Al’s I Want to Get Married as a case study.

This chapter provides the historical context in which Egyptian blogs appeared. Drawing on ethnographic research on the Internet and in the Egyptian literary sphere, it shows that the introduction of Internet tools in the Arab world was soon accompanied by the emergence of numerous platforms for distributing and discussing Arabic literature, such as forums, literary websites, online publishing houses, the Internet Arab Writers Union, and so on. This atmosphere was conducive to the adoption of blogs as a platform for literary experimentation in Egypt. The chapter then focuses on blogging in the Arab world and in particular in Egypt, providing a short history of its development. It also addresses how Internet media have affected Arabic literature as a tool for publishing and distribution, as in the case of book-blogs.

Amy Jo Burns discusses DeSalvo’s most recent foray into blogging, especially as it is informed by and informs her writing and teachings. The essay examines DeSalvo’s Writingalife’s Blog, which, Burns argues, succeeds in “genre-straddling” by bringing together the contemplative memoir and the hurried blog.

This chapter examines changing patterns of newspaper reporting of the proceedings of the Westminster Parliament during the twentieth century. It offers a detailed case study of coverage at a key moment and argues that since the 1990s, newspaper reports from the House fluctuated greatly in number and kind while also exhibiting a growing focus on lobby reporting at the expense of the Gallery tradition since the 1930s. Drawing on contemporary interviews with Parliamentary correspondents, combined with content analysis of national newspaper coverage, the chapter highlights  the striking decline in press reports across all national newspapers as well as the alleged ‘dumbing down’ of published Parliamentary stories. The chapter concludes by exploring the possibilities of digitally native editorial formats such as live blogging, developed at the end of the twentieth century, for enhancing Parliamentary coverage.