Public and Private Diaries
The Ancestral Genres of the Blog in Egypt
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12955445 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Teresa Pepe (0009-0003-4681-3832, University of Oslo, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 15 |
| Issue | 1-2 |
| Pages | 152-172 |
| Publication date | 2022-06-15 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1873-9857 • E-ISSN: 1873-9865 |
| Publisher | Brill (PUBLISHER • NL) |
| DOI | 10.1163/18739865-01501007 |
| OpenAlex | W4284992835 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 17 |
This article analyzes a number of Egyptian blogs in relation to their print ancestors, in particular private notebooks written by young effendis in the 1920s and public fictional diaries serialized in the periodical press in the same period in Egypt. It compares the media transition taking place in Egypt in the early 2000s following the adoption of blogging and social media to the one occurring in the early decades of the twentieth century following the popularization of printed products. Using theories from media studies and rhetorical studies, it shows how the blog inherits some of the formal and stylistic features of private diaries as well as their anti-authoritarian attitude. Yet it also shows how compared to its ancestors, the blog favors an unprecedented exposure of personal, private issues in public, turning self-writing into a social, communicative activity. Similarly, autofiction and subversive styles of writing are techniques that bloggers borrow from the fictional print diaries in order to write about their private lives in public. However, digital tools, with their mode of circulation, temporality and increasing exposure to state and informal censorship, make it increasingly difficult for bloggers to keep a room of their own
Aesthetics · Art · Authoritarianism · Business · Censorship · Literature · Media studies · Order (exchange · Period (music · Political science · Politics · Rhetorical question · Social media · Sociology · State (computer science · Temporality · Computer Science · Islamic Studies and History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Law · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies
Weblogs as a bridging genre
Culture and Hegemony in the Colonial Middle East
Public and Private in Middle Eastern Women's History
Blogging from Egypt
The Novel and the Rural Imaginary in Egypt, 1880-1985
Arabic in the City. Issues in dialect contact and language variation
Arab Women Bloggers
Boys, Girls, and Kodaks
Taken Out of Context
Ordinary Egyptians
The Women's Awakening in Egypt
Leonardo Electronic Almanac
Gender, Nation and the Arabic Novel
The Culture of Print
New Media, the “Arab Spring,” and the Metamorphosis of the Public Sphere
Taken Out of Context
Anxious Advocacy
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |