On behalf of Jadaliyya’s team, I`d like to share some of what we have been doing in recent weeks. The last time we communicated such developments to our readers was a couple of months into launching the site last fall. In the mean time, Jadaliyya grew beyond our best expectations and slowly colonized our (Jadaliyya Editors) lives as uprisings and revolts swept the Arab World and dominated our thoughts and keyboards.
First, we would like to thank our readers for making Jadaliyya a staple of sorts among sites that address the region. We have been overwhelmed with your positive feedback for almost a year now, which is what keeps us going against all odds. Considering that Jadaliyya has thus far been a completely volunteer-based operation, and devoid of any serious funds, we owe a great deal to our readers for spreading the word far and wide. We have been able to reach audiences across all continents and, thanks to the uprisings, our readership reached 10,000 to 14,000 per day this past winter/spring as observers found our reporting and analysis worthy of following closely, and daily.
Today, after nearly 10 months of launching Jadaliyya, we have expanded our pages and updated various mechanisms through which we communicate with, and engage, our readers. Beyond our popular Reviews, Reports, and Interviews pages, we have created three new pages/sections, including our literally booming Culture Section and a Jadeo Page (audio-visual posts). Below are some highlights.
O.I.L.
Our most recent creation (last week!) is the new O.I.L. Page (Occupation, Intervention, Law), about which we’re quite excited. As the announcement states, “[t]he purpose of O.I.L. is to explore the relationship between, and the debates within, the fields of armed conflict, politics, and international law. These debates include developments in international law, the implications of intervention, the legitimacy, or lack thereof, of resistance, the political economy of conflict, war profiteering, the humanitarian dimension of war and peace, and movements and related forces.” You may find the call for posts on that page. You can also find the call for post for the Culture and Reviews sections here and here.
Arabic Section
Significantly, we have begun a full-fledged expansion of the Arabic Section, starting by offering four pages or sub-categories of Arabic posts, including culture, politics, history, and economics. This is only the first step for a more serious expansion of content as Jadaliyya will become more active in soliciting content in Arabic, and venture more seriously into the realm of translating posts in both directions, pending funding for translators.
JadNav
We want to bring your attention particularly to our revamped JadNav (Jadaliyya Navigation Page), which allows you to surf Jadaliyya posts effortlessly as it packs material from the entire site on one page, with specially featured content.
Jadeo
Jadeo is the pre-launch page for our future full-fledged Media page. We created it to respond to folks who ask about our video content. It features all our audio-visual content in a more visual manner, allowing readers to see and hear, not just read, what is going on.
Footer
Our new Footer includes nearly everything on the site that is now operable. Now readers can access all kinds of information, from submission guidelines to different pages and features, simply by clicking on links in the footer at the bottom of every page.
Facebook Activity
Beyond pages, we have finally succumbed and added a Facebook “Recent Activity” and "Hot on Facebook This Week" boxes that shows your “friends’” activity and what`s trending on Facebook. The boxes reveal, to some extent, what is being circulated/forwarded/liked/recommended, but it does prejudice Facebook--hence, our initial resistance!
Jadaliyya Team
Finally, but most importantly, our expanded team of dedicated volunteers and other information about Jadaliyya can always be found by clicking About atop the site. Also, click here to view all Jadaliyya Contributors.
There will be more announcements soon, particularly for a subset of our readers who are into mobile things! Stay tuned, and thanks for making us a bookmark. In the mean time, if you wish to contribute a post, be sure to visit our submission guidelines page, and send your posts to post@jadaliyya.com
Thanks for reading Jadaliyya.