Egyptian women bloggers: perceptions of empowerment in the online public sphere

Abstract

The current study aimed at investigating Egyptian women's motivations and experiences with blogging as a tool of empowerment. A combined purposive and snowball sample of Egyptian women bloggers was drawn and data, obtained from an online survey, were analyzed using descriptive statistics and non parametric statistics through IBM SPSS Statistics v.19.

Statistics revealed a correlation between the motives of Egyptian women bloggers - considered as a form of dis-empowerment - and the gratifications â as a form of empowerment â they get out of blogging. Highly significant correlations were found between the personal motives and the personal gratifications of bloggers, with a relation between the personal and social empowerment, as the two most important elements on the economic and political ones characterizing the empowerment process of Egyptian women bloggers.