ICT,Social Media,and the Arab Transition to Democracy: From Venting to Acting

There is widespread use of information and communications technology (ICT) in the Middle East and North African countries. Blogging and social media have played an important role in the recent calls for reform and change. Using these new communication systems and devices, citizens have been venting their anger and frustration with their autocratic governments and rulers. Most recently, the venting has turned into action, as shown by the eradication of the old regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, as well as the ongoing struggle in Syria. The most notable issues include lack of individual freedoms, deteriorating economic conditions, high unemployment, increased corruption, and violent treatment of citizens at the hands of security forces. The Arab Spring, or Awakening, and the events that have since followed have, in part, been promoted by ICT and other means of modern communications. Along with the popular Arab traditions of oral communication as well as Friday and Sunday sermons at mosques and churches, social media were used by organizers of the Arab Spring to call for and coordinate demonstrations against the regimes. Access to this newer media has circumvented the established and government‐controlled media such as printed press, radio, and television—outlets bent on appeasing the rulers and misinforming the masses. Arab authoritarian systems have discovered that they cannot simply flip a big red switch to stop the flow of information that they would rather keep hidden from the masses. Further discussed are digital democracies that are currently emerging because of the growing population of netizens, bloggers, and social media political activists throughout the Arab world and the many attempts to silence them.     

Bibliometric Indicators of the Scholarly Productivity of Researchers and Scientists in Kuwait as Documented by Citation to Their Published Works

The study uses the bibliometric method of research to examine the productivity of academic scientists and re searchers in Kuwait. The Institute for Scientific Information's Arts and Humanities Index, Social Science Index, and Science Citation Index are surveyed to gather the data by department and year from 1986 through 1995. Analysis of Kuwaiti cited papers show the majority of journals (35%) which cited Kuwaiti institutions are published in the U.S. Analysis of the papers published in 1994 revealed that Kuwaiti's participation in the international scientific literature is higher than those of their colleagues from Morocco or Egypt. The data is discussed in light of theories of bibliometrics and the Bradford Law of Scattering.