Category Media

Top Ten Twitter users in Saudi Arabia

Twitter is big in Saudi Arabia. There, I said it. While no one can say for sure how many Saudi Twitter users exist, I think it is safe to say that the number is in the thousands. Regardless of the numbers, there have always been questions about the influence of social media on public discourse in the Middle East, with many dismissing these new tools as factors for stimulating change. However, I think that the past few months have showed some clear examples for what is possible using social media, as we have seen in stories like those of Samar Badwai and Abdulwahab al-Essa. With Twitter announcing their plan to launch an Arabic version next year, we can only expect that the influence of Twitter will grow and increase.

Now when you first register to Twitter, the website shows lists of suggested users to follow. Unfortunately, these lists are not exactly helpful if you are interested in following people in a certain country. That’s why I wanted to create this list. The list, which ranks users according to the number of their followers, is based on my own personal unscientific research, and it includes only real humans, compared to those Twitter accounts populated by bots/feeds. If I missed anyone, feel free to correct me in the comments.

Without further ado, here is my list for the top 10 Twitter users in Saudi Arabia:

  1. @Azizshalan: This was a surprise to me. I have never heard of Aziz Shalan before working on this list, and his bio offers very little on who he is or what he does. What we know is that he is based in Jeddah, he has more than 12,000 followers, and he tweets in both Arabic and English about many different things.
  2. @TurkiAldakhil: Turki al-Dakhil hosts a popular weekly talk show on Al Arabiya channel, owns Al-Misbar research center in Dubai, and writes a daily column for Al Watan newspaper. Since joining the service last year he has been pretty active, using Twitter to express his thoughts and opinions. He recently asked his followers to suggest names for his show and what questions to ask them.
  3. @RayeD_X: Another surprise on the list. I don’t know much about this user except for what he provides in his bio: he is apparently an engineering student at Umm Al-Qura University, and he ranks #2 on the world in Killzone, which is a first-person shooter video game.
  4. @essamz: A relatively distant fourth, Essam Al-Zamil is an entrepreneur and blogger from the Eastern Province. He focuses on economics, especially issues related to real estate and unemployment in Saudi Arabia.
  5. @alfarhan: Fouad al-Farhan is the most well-known Saudi blogger. Even when he was not blogging, he was regularly tweeting, and has been for the past four years. Fouad tweets about politics, society, and entrepreneurship.
  6. @Nejer: Cartoonist Malik Nejer uses Twitter to share his latest work and comment on social and political issues. In his bio, he describes himself as someone who is interested in natural sciences and human rights. Recently, Malik announced his engagement to another user, @contradict1987, and they occasionally have cute exchanges on Twitter ;-)
  7. @ahmed: Yours truly.
  8. @alzaid: Saleh Alzaid is not merely a Twitter user. As the founder of TwitEmail and the owner of TwtBase, this programmer has made his mark on the Twitter community not just in Saudi Arabia but around the world.
  9. @ibrahemsu: Ibrahem AlSuhaibani blogs in Arabic about marketing, branding, and corporate identity. This kind of content is severely lacking and much needed in the Arab speaking internet. On Twitter, Ibrahim shows a more lighthearted side, but also shares links to creative works with brief commentary.
  10. @Bandar: Bandar Raffah is a graphic designer who makes beautiful things. You can take a glimpse of his recent work by looking at successful iOS apps such as 2Do, QamarDeen, and iPray. His Twitter stream is a mixture of distinctive ranting with occasional links.
  11. Bonus! @azizkhoja: With 123 tweets only, the Saudi minister of information and culture Abdulaziz Khoja is not the most prolific Twitter user. However, his presence as a senior government official on this social network is definitely interesting. The minister links to his recent articles and sometimes replies to fellow tweeps questions.

Miscellany from the past two weeks

  • So a couple of week ago, the Saudi Council of Senior Ulema issued a fatwa banning female cashiers. What happens next? Saudi Arabia gets a seat on the board of UN Women, the new United Nations super agency that is supposed to focus on gender equality and women’s empowerment. This is not a bad joke, as Nobel Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi said. It’s a reality now. It’s been 20 years since 47 Saudi women led a protest in Riyadh to drive cars. They are still not allowed to drive.
  • Jamal Ghosn: “I am not worried about the stockpiling of weapons, since I’m not naive to think that ever stops. I’m not worried about a certain $60 billion purchase of weapons, although I do wonder what will be the return on investment when it’s sold as scrap metal.”
  • At the time when I’m getting lost in Manhattan to report stories about life in New York, my good friends Ali al-Khalthami and Fahad al-Butairi back home get to do awesome, fun stuff like this:
  • The Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association have announced that they plan to sue the Ministry of Interior on behalf of all those banned from traveling without a legal sentence. The current list of travel bans include some prominent activists such as Abdullah al-Hamed and Matrouk al-Faleh.
  • A group of wildlife lovers in Riyadh are leading efforts to free an endangered Arabian Lynx that has been imprisoned in a pet shop in a small glass box with a hard, concrete floor for over 4 years. How can you help? Glad you asked. Go to this Facebook group, and contact the Saudi Wildlife Commission.
  • Anyone who lived in the western region of Saudi Arabia can talk to you for hours about how great and delicious AlBaik chicken is. People living in other parts of the country are out of luck as they don’t have any branches there. There are several theories that have been flying for years as to why AlBaik don’t open in other regions, including one that involves the richest Saudi man alive. Nobody, however, has confirmed information on the true reason behind this geographic conundrum for friend chicken lovers.
  • I know it’s almost mid November, but Lou K has a pretty good post about once a pretty “Saudi” October. Probably unrelated, but you also may want to read The skinny on Jeddah dating.
  • The Brookings Institution’s Doha Center has launched its 2010 essay contest. It’s designed only for students living/studying in the 22 Arab states between the ages of 20 and 30, and the hope is to identify talent for political analysis in the region, as well as provide an unprecedented and independent platform to share their views with political leaders and pundits, the media, and the public at large. The first place winner will receive $2000, the runner up $1000, and honorable mention(s) $500. You can find more details here.
  • Sorry about the hiatus. Been busy with school. Here is two examples from the stuff I’ve been working on.

Press freedom ranking, arms, doctors, genies, he’s back!

  • At least 20 Saudi medical doctors wanted to show the world what kind of ignorant idiots they are, so they went and joined an ongoing campaign calling for special government hospitals for women in order to prevent mixing of genders. Carol Fleming, who worked for hospitals in Riyadh, comments.
  • The recent US-Saudi arms deal, with an estimated $60bn price tag, was marked by the unusual absence of any opposition by Israel and its lobby in Washington DC. Dov Zakheim, blogging at Foreign Policy’s Shadow Government blog, says this is “In part because the Israelis do not expect such an attack [from the Saudis]; in part because they will be receiving the more advanced F-35 the same year that the Saudis begin to take ownership of the F-15s…” At the end of his post he mentions one more reason: “Riyadh is the biggest prize and the Israelis are ready to go to great lengths to win it over — and if that means silence in the face of a massive purchase of American arms, so be it.”
  • Speaking of Foreign Policy, they have this aptly titled article by Simon Henderson about the return of Prince Bandar bin Sultan, head of the National Security Council, after two years of being AWOL. Elaph had the scoop on this one a couple of weeks ago.
  • RSF released their 2010 Press Freedom Index. Saudi Arabia, unsurprisingly, is at the bottom ranking 157 out of 178. Last year we were 163. Can we call this progress? As a journalism student, I’m not quite sure how to feel about this.
  • Everybody back home is laughing about this. I don’t want to talk about it.

Samar

Samar Badawi has always struggled with her father. He abused her verbally and physically, and even after she got married and had a son of her own, he kept interfering with her life. She got divorced, and decided to live with her brother. The father tried to sue his son and daughter, who was taken to a women’s shelter thanks to an order from Prince Mishal bin Majed, the mayor of Jeddah.

The father did not stop there. He tried to sue Samar again, but the case was dismissed. After staying in the shelter for sixteen months, she sent a letter to the mayor asking for permission to live with her son. The mayor accepted her request, and asked the police to protect her from the father.

Samar filed a lawsuit to lift her father’s guardianship, and the court ruled in her favor. The father filed a “filial ingratitude” complaint against her. When she went to challenge the complaint, “the judge pledged to teach her obedience and flog her himself.” Despite the previous court rulings and her father’s documented abuse, and even a royal order from Prince Khalid al-Faisal, governor of Makkah, to send her back to the shelter, the judge sent her to prison.

Samar told the Financial Times that the judge thinks a woman must submit to her father, regardless of how abusive he is. “Conservative judges hate the government’s women’s shelters because they empower women. They call them brothels,” she said.

This was six months ago. It was only last week that Samar and her lawyer decided to go public with the case. Since the local newspapers won’t pick up a sensitive story like this one, they went online. With help of fellow blogger Fouad al-Farhan, they set up a blog where they told Samar’s story and uploaded all the documents of her case. The case was also heavily discussed on Twitter, where users in Saudi Arabia used the hashtag #samar to denote their tweets about it.

While Samar enjoyed a lot of support from most users on Twitter, there have been some people who defended the judge, saying the case is being used to attack the Saudi judicial system. Moreover, a blog was to “basically show how the people responsible for the news breakout are not credible, liberal westernizers,” according Lou K.

Earlier today, Samar’s lawyer Waleed Abu Alkhair tweeted that the Supreme Judicial Council has opened an investigation into the case, anticipating a resolution in the next few days.

Samar’s story is undoubtedly a disturbing, heartbreaking one. It’s surely nor over yet, but now that the case is — I hope — moving forward, let me take a moment to say two of things about this:

  • The case shows that despite all the promises and the billions of riyals allocated to reform the judiciary system, we are still so far away from anywhere near a true reform for this institution. It’s been three years, and we are yet to see any tangible progress.
  • While many people still like to question the power of web and social media to make a difference to our society, this case offers a good evidence that the influence of online tools can be effective. Remember, the story was not picked up by any newspaper in Saudi Arabia so far.

I salute Fouad, Waleed and the others who supported this case. It fills my heart with hope to see many of my countrymen and women speak up and refuse to ignore injustice. Our nation deserves better than this, and we should never settle for less.

Talking to the Mirror

You are probably familiar with the name of Abdul Rahman al-Hazza by now. Al-Hazza is the deputy minister of information and culture who made the headlines a couple of weeks ago when he announced that Saudi bloggers need to register their sites with the government, before retracting his comments saying registration won’t be required but is highly encouraged.

Al-Hazza writes a column for Okaz newspaper where he occasionally says things that make no sense, especially coming from a government official.

Take for example his piece today: Al-Hazza talks about how Saudi Arabia has a very small number of journalists compared to the size of its population. He then goes on to say that the country needs more newspapers, radio stations, and television channels. He complains how we, and not I’m not sure exactly what he means by ‘we,’ only think about big newspapers and big television companies, asking: why there are no small regional newspapers, and why there are no local radio and television channels?

Huh?

You would think that Abdul Rahman al-Hazza, as a senior official in the Ministry of Culture and Information (MOCI), should know the answers to these questions, or at least is working to figure out the answers. As a fresh journalism student, I can’t claim that I know the answers for his big, open-ended questions, but I think I do have a teeny tiny pointer to offer: look at your own ministry!

When MOCI, after 3 long years of stagnation, finally decided to grant licenses for new radio stations to operate in the country earlier this year, the average price was around SR50 million. Just imagine what is the licensing costs for a newspaper or a television channel. I simply don’t believe that the ministry is serious about opening the space for more media outlets in Saudi Arabia.

As the debacle of the new law for regulating so-called “electronic media” showed, they are obsessed with control, and allowing more media outlets in the country means they will have to put so much more work into censoring and controlling these outlets. Why would they won’t to create a headache to themselves?

Protests near Ground Zero

Today marks the ninth anniversary of 9/11. The day witnessed heated demonstrations — against and for the proposed Islamic community center — two blocks away from ground zero. I was there this afternoon with a friend of mine, and took some pictures.

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