Jordan Watch: Jordanian Blogs and Lack of Debate on Critical Issues

The following post should be read with this post from Naseem Tarawneh

I was just strating to energize my brain cells to write about a phenomenon I have long observed in the Jordanian blogs, when I read Nassems' fantastic post about the same issue entitled "Jordanian bloggers and blogging about the issues that really matter". The brilliant post and the lively debates in Naseem's blog form an intricate fabric of the question in mind, but I want to elaborate more on two major issues:

1- Why don't Jordanian bloggers engage in the critical issues? I agree with Naseem's compilation of critical issues (i.e poverty, education, unemployment, etc...) which do not necessarily means traditional politics. I know that most of Jordanians whether bloggers or even academic intellectuals shy away from debating political issues but I also believe that our daily lives contains more priorities that need to be debated. Indeed, such socio-economic issues impact the quality of our lives more than politics but still seem to find little mentioning in blogs. I think this is an ordinary phase in the evolution of blogs. They started with personal blogs then emerged some blogs that discuss issues of public interest but still in a narrow medium of readers amd commentators. In the next few months I do expect more thrust in discussing critical issues in Jordanian blogs unless we are faced with a very restrictive legal framework that prohibits freedom of expression in blogs and make it more similar to traditional newspapers. In general the quality of blog posts that dicuss public issues is much better than most newspaper articles. I say this with the position of a self-proclaimed informed journalist in traditional media.

2- What Impacts the blogs are making in Jordan vis-a-vis debate and political reforms? Nothing, but this is a natural consequence of the fact that even historic institutiosn like political parties and the Parliament are contributing nothing to political reform and debate. Issues in Jordan are not debated, and especially big decisions like selling the country one piece at a time. Decisions are top down and non-transparent. Any attempt to marginalise the impacts of blogs in debate should also look at the big picture as debate is prohibited especially in socio-economic issues. What blogs are doing and should contribute more in the future is giving a picture about Jordan from inside that is more real and different than the agendas of foreign correspondents in Jordan. I have met a few of the so-called experts about Jordan in foreign press and they focus on two things: the relation between the state and Islamists and the Jordanian-Palestinian dichotomy. Apart from this "experts" about Jordan are mainly devoid of any understanding of the deep socio-economic drivers of change and blogs can be an important tool for presenting the real Jordan to the World, uncensored by the government and not manipulated by foreign correspondents.

I still think that the main limiting factor for Jordanian blogs to exert a profound impact on the Jordanian national debate is the language barrier, but I need to write a separate post about it.