A brief history of Internet access in the Gulf region provides some background on online literary production there. Internet access did not develop synchronously all over the world.
Countries allowed Internet access at different times, including in the Gulf region. In the mid-1990s, a community wider than just governmental and financial spaces in the Gulf began to gain access to the Internet. The first country to enable its people to go online was Kuwait in 1995.6 A couple of years later most of the other Gulf states also allowed their citizens to go online.7 User statistics differ, depending on the institutions that gather them;
the official figures at http://www.internetworldstats.com/ are commonly used in academic research. User statistics in Iraq are not presented here.8 According to this source, the highest number of Internet users is in Bahrain with 88%, followed by the UAE with 75.9%, Qatar with 51.8% and Oman with 41.7 % in the mid-range, while lower user numbers are found in Kuwait with 39.4%, and Saudi Arabia with 38.1%.9
6 Deborah L. Wheeler, The Internet in The Middle East: Global Expectations And Local Imaginations In Kuwait, New York 2005.
7 Grey E. Burkhart, Seymour E. Goodman: The Internet Gains Acceptance in the Persian Gulf. Commun.
ACM 41(3), 1998, pp. 19-25.
8 Iraq is not included in the researched sources and also has a special position because of the destruction of infrastructure in the Iraq War that started in 2003.
9 "Middle East Internet Usage & Population Statistics" http://www.Internetworldstats.com/stats5.htm, January 2011, last accessed December 29, 2011.
Statistics on Internet penetration in Gulf countries present a challenge. In the countries of the Gulf which have large numbers of expatriate workers it is impossible to differentiate whether the local or the expatriate population is going online. As an extreme example, the population in the Emirate of Dubai consisted of almost 90% foreigners in 2011.10 Online access in Internet cafés does not influence the analysis of statistics in the Gulf region as much as in other Arabic-speaking countries; relative wealth means that people tend to go online in private settings. Nevertheless, younger users often access the Internet at universities.
The number of expatriates in the Gulf countries varies. The two states with the highest percentage of foreigners are Qatar and the UAE (about 80%). In the UAE, the proportions vary from emirate to emirate.11 Kuwait’s foreign population, too, is high: 68%.12 Bahrain has a population of a little over one million, of which 37% are foreigners.13 Oman and Saudi Arabia have similar percentages of foreigners, about 25%.14 Oman has policies promoting citizen employment in preference to expatriate employment, given equal qualifications, in order to reduce dependencies among citizens.15 Other Gulf countries, for example Saudi Arabia, also foster hiring locals.16
The huge volume of expatriate labour influences not only Internet user statistics, but also society as a whole. Globalisation is mirrored in the sheer diversity of nationalities visible in everyday life; this includes culture, shopping and foodstuffs.17
It is interesting to compare the level of Internet access in less-wealthy Arabic-speaking countries, which have fewer expatriates, with that in the richer Gulf countries that have more expatriates.18 The lowest numbers of people accessing the Internet is in Libya, with 4.55%, which may be due to political circumstances. Syria is relatively low with
10 David Rosenberg, "UAE’s expat population surges to reach almost 90 percent", Arab News, April 3rd 2011,http://arabnews.com/middleeast/article342321.ece, last accessed December 29, 2011.
11 Qatar: http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/5437.htm, last accessed January 2, 2012.
UAE:http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/5444.htm, last accessed January 2, 2012.
12 Kuwait: http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/35876.htm, last accessed January 2, 2012.
13 Bahrain: http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/26414.htm, last accessed January 2, 2012.
14 Oman:http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/35834.htm. last accessed January 2, 2012.
Saudi Arabia: http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/3584.htm, last accessed January 2, 2012.
15 Information on “Omanization” is provided by Ashley DeFlumere on her website on the subject.
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~deflu20a/classweb/omanization/omanization.html, last accessed November 29, 2011 and on oman.net http://www.omanet.om/english/misc/omanise.asp, last accessed November 29, 2011.
16 Saudi Princess Ameerah gave an interview on Bloomberg TV on this subject, September 23, 2011 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxVJ9PnikI8, last accessed November 29, 2011.
17 More on the influence of globalisation in Gulf countries in connection to language and literature is found in the chapter Visual Setup, Features of Narration and Language (Chapter One) as well as in the chapter Who are the Actors? Portray of Heroes (Chapter Three).
18 http://www.Internetworldstats.com October 2011.
19.8%. In Egypt, 24% of the people go online, in Jordan 26.8%, Lebanon follows with 29%, Tunisia's Internet users are about 33.9% of the population and Morocco has an Internet penetration of 41.3%. The greatest number of Internet users is measured in the Palestinian territories with 53%. Percentages of Internet penetration are often difficult to interpret. Various factors affect online access statistics. It is impossible to determine how many users are online in Internet cafés or on shared devices. Going online at Internet cafés is especially common in countries where people cannot afford private Internet access at home. Additionally, more than one person in a family may use a single private computer.
Universities also offer Internet access to their members, which may influence the statistics.
Often politics play a role whether, when and how Internet access is provided in a country.
This is connected not only to online censorship and censorship in general, but also to the level of education provided in a country. Helen Milner states that access to free information can threaten autocratic regimes.19 To avoid this threat, restrictions are made. User numbers therefore cannot be estimated by counting households with Internet access.
Fewer people use the Internet in Arabic-speaking countries without oil resources than in the Gulf countries.20 Education levels and illiteracy percentages are a factor in this.
Additionally, some governing systems restrict online access. Restrictions online and offline are an important factor in online literary production in the Arab countries and especially in the Gulf.21
Despite these reservations it seems safe to say that the number of Internet users in Gulf countries is relatively high. Even if the above caveats leave the figures uncertain, comparing Gulf statistics with those of other countries reveals tendencies of Internet use.
19 Helen V. Milner, The Digital Divide: The Role of Political Institutions in Technology Diffusion, Comparative Political Studies 39, no. 2, 2006, pp. 176-199, p. 184.
20 Except of Libya which is due to political circumstances.
21 More on restrictions in the region can be found in: Bruce Etling, John Kelly, Robert Faris, and John Palfrey:Mapping the Arabic Blogosphere: Politics, Culture, and Dissent (2009)
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/publications/2009/Mapping_the_Arabic_Blogosphere, last accessed December 29, 2011.