Young people in the Middle East are once again pushing the bounds of traditional media through the internet, reports CNN. The article highlights Esra"a Al-Shafei, a 23-year-old college graduate who started a website where Muslim youth can "show a different side of our religion;" one that has been lost in media coverage of extremist activities and fundamentalism.

Al-Shafei told CNN that she had grown frustrated by Arab and Western media, which she says were both "sticking to the extremes."

Al-Shafei is in good company with a group of Saudi youths who have started their own campaign to battle misperceptions of Islam and Saudi society specifically, reports Al-Arabiya. Their campaign, which is chiefly over the internet, is aimed at convincing Western media outlets that their representation of Saudi Arabia is too unfavorably biased.

"The campaign is not after imposing censorship on journalists," official spokesman Amgad Al-Manif told Al-Arabiya. "We are not against freedom of expression. We are against incorrect information, which defeats the purpose of journalism."

Both of these initiatives have been organized by young Arabs, although they are aimed at convincing an older and more established audience who may not be as internet-savvy as the founders" peers. But, according to Gulf News, online access in the Middle East will soon be easier for many more users thanks to new technology which will allow website addresses in the Arabic alphabet.

Until now, URLs have not been possible in languages that do not use the Latin alphabet. By 2010, web addresses should be available even in non-alphabetic scripts, such as Chinese, and right-to-left script such as Arabic, reports Gulf News.

Highlighting the role that Arab youth are playing online in shaping their societies, blogger Jameel Theyabi writes about a recent study from Cairo University which "notes that the youths of Facebook in Egypt have succeeded in bringing a new and unfamiliar generation from the civil society organizations in the Egyptian reality, and that this generation will become able to do what it wants, and introduce the changes it aspires for in the near future."

Theyabi continues that while acknowledging criticism of Facebook as 'immoral' and inciting insurrection, the study concludes that, "Facebook is a new way to impose democracy in terms of the virtual self that cannot be controlled, through meeting in a space that cannot be besieged ... By exchanging ideas and thoughts, they live in an atmosphere of digital democracy, where they develop a democratic ideology inside their non-democratic countries."

This view is upheld by other bloggers, such as Evgeny Morozov at Foreign Policy, who cites renewed efforts by the US to combat internet censorship in undemocratic societies. "Usually there are many more talented people opposing the dictators," he writes. "So my bet has been that the "good guys" will always be a few steps ahead."

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