Financial Sustainability and the Demise of the Egyptian Blogosphere

Abstract

Alternative media platforms in general and social media and bloggers in particular have had great impact on pushing media agendas, breaking barriers, and discussing issues that were previously ignored by mainstream media. People have found social media and blogs to be platforms for dissidence in a limited media environment. But bloggers who were once alternative voices presenting nonmainstream coverage and analysis of events and enjoying more freedom than traditional journalists are increasingly disappearing from the blogging and microblogging scenes and moving to mainstream platforms due to lack of congregated blogs, financial backing, and advertising. This article aims to look at how the lack of a viable financial model to support blogs and microblogs is resulting in the demise of the Egyptian blogosphere. This article then looks at financial sustainability of bloggers through the comparative analysis of and interviews with popular blogs and social media users in Egypt.