Tucked away in the archives of Alarabiya.net, the website of the Al Arabiya news channel, is a short clip that appears to show a Saudi man throwing his wife out the window of their apartment building.

The woman clings to the ledge with two hands as her feet dangle off what appears to be the third floor. Finally, after a short struggle, the man is seen returning inside, abandoning the woman as she screams for help. The voices of shocked spectators can be heard on the ground below from the vantage point of the cameraman. But within a few seconds, it’s all over. The woman suddenly loses her grip, her left leg snapping on the balcony below as she plummets toward the ground.

The video, captured on a cell phone, is one of hundreds of short clips that populate a section of Al Arabiya’s website called Video Forum, which features a wild mix of obscure and often dramatic or violent material recorded by amateurs. The site receives approximately 300,000 visits per day according to Al Arabiya, with clips constantly being uploaded from across the Arab World, from cell phones, webcams or digital cameras.

One of the most popular selections is a video that claims to show a Jinn, an Islamic term which roughly translates into ‘supernatural being’ shown traveling through a wedding party as a fleeting body of light. Other videos include one that purports to show billionaire Saudi prince Al Waleed Bin Talal, firing an assault rifle on a “hunting trip,” as well as the audacious sport of camel jumping in Yemen. A few of the clips, often the less controversial ones, make it onto the airwaves and others can be used journalistically to supplement provocative news reports.

The concept, known as user-generated content (UGC), has become a global phenomenon redefining the way media outlets across the world operate. In the US, amateur video sites like YouTube – valued at $1.65 billion during a recent acquisition by Google – are transforming pop culture, creating quirky online celebrities overnight and wrecking the careers of others such as Michael Richards, a.k.a. “Kramer” from the hit sitcom Seinfeld, whose alleged racist rampage was caught on a cell phone video. But in the Middle East, unscripted drama can become an explosive socio-political catalyst that transcends the world of entertainment.

So far, the most publicized example of UGC in the Arab world has been the notorious clip that revealed Saddam Hussein being taunted just before his execution. That exposé, which instantly blanketed television screens across the world, could be just the tip of the iceberg in a region dominated by state-backed media and whitewashed events.

Just as UGC foiled Iraqi authorities attempt to portray Hussein’s execution as solemn and uneventful, it has also embarrassed other governments and organizations across the region. Some of the most damning examples have come from Egypt, where a video surfaced late last year showing a man apparently being sexually assaulted with a wooden stick while in the custody of local police.

The clip comes on the heels of a series of other amateur videos that have shown mobs of men assaulting women on the streets of Cairo. In both cases, the stories shocked the Egyptian public but they received little coverage in the local press until the videos gained momentum on independent commentary sites or blogs, which have become a key outlet for posting UGC and circumventing the watchful eye of the state over the airwaves.

“You cannot block information now,” says Ammar Bakkar, head of New Media at MBC, the parent company of Al Arabiya. “Before, a lot of information was not available; now if anything happens, it comes out the next day on the net.”

Bakkar says Al Arabiya has been receiving around 50 uploads of user-generated videos per day since the Forum was introduced last year, increasing overall traffic on the station’s news site by 20 percent from 700,000 to 1.1 million hits per day.

Bakkar, formerly the editor in chief of Alarabiya.net, says the site is virtually free from censorship although a handful of clips have been removed, either because they were deemed to be personal attacks, i.e. “a woman shown drinking alcohol,” or hateful in nature, such as calls for sectarian violence in Iraq: “We don’t want to be part of escalating this conflict,” he explained.

Yet despite the best efforts of moderators, attack-oriented UGC is making its way onto Arab telelvision. Al Zawraa, a new free-to-air channel that began broadcasting on Egypt’s Nilesat satellite last year, beams out an entire grid of amateur footage showcasing mortar attacks on the Iraqi government as well as US troops in Iraq. Indeed, user-generated content—aside from the redeeming benefits of proving accountability—can also serve to highlight existing social divisions in many Arab societies.

In Lebanon for example, a fierce propaganda war has erupted between channels supportive of the government and those supportive of the Hezballah-led opposition, with both sides exchanging jabs in the form of short attack clips aired during commercial breaks. UGC came into the mix when a grainy cell phone video emerged during the beginning of the opposition’s virtual siege of the upscale downtown Beirut area. The clip, which was originally posted on YouTube, and then played repeatedly on Future TV, showed a man apparently lowering the Lebanese flag and raising a Hezballah one in its place to cheers from the excited crowd.

Hezballah reacted to the video by attempting to ban all UGC from the downtown area, restricting any filming of their supporters, who have been camped across the city center since last December, to holders of official press passes.

For Future TV chairman Nadim Munla, the flag video is a vindication of what he sees as the reality on the ground: “You want truth and transparency? This is truth and transparency because this guy is capturing exactly what’s going on, unedited, as is.”

Munla says UGC was especially useful during last summer’s war with Israel, in light of the unpredictability of air raids across the country. “A TV channel cannot mobilize all its resources everywhere all the time” whereas with amateur video he argues, “everyone is a moving cameraman.”

But many Arab channels remain uneasy about the grittiness and potential tensions caused by politically-charged UGC.

Dream TV, one of Egypt’s more daring private networks, did not air the torture videos that recently surfaced on Egyptian blogs. “The footage is controversial,” says the channel’s president, Amr Khafagy. “We don’t know exactly what happened. We couldn’t validate it. We discussed it on the air, but we didn’t run the footage. We didn’t have any proof.”
Dream TV also ruled out broadcasting the Hussein execution, citing “religious implications” and “respect for the dead.”

In fact, the only occurrence of UGC on Dream thus far has been mobile phone images of youngsters jumping off a bridge into the Nile, “because it was funny and didn’t pit any party against another,” says Khafagy. “I welcome people’s participation in sending in funny stories, but when it comes to political events, I prefer to have my own footage.”

Controversy also seems to be a concern at Saudi-owned MBC. Like Dream, Al Arabiya chose not to run the sexual harassment clips from Egyptian websites, opting instead to send its own team to cover the story, although a blogger was interviewed, according to New Media chief, Bakkar.
He says some of the most popular clips have been apolitical, such as that of the mysterious Jinn, as well as a video that shows one camel choking another to death; Bedouin folklore that was authenticated thanks to UGC.

The camel story made it on Al Arabiya’s morning show, but when asked about the woman thrown from the window, Bakkar, a PhD from the University of Oklahoma, said that the video could not be confirmed nor was it deemed newsworthy enough to make it on air: “We didn’t find it a very good story,” he says.

That answer may come as a shock to Western audiences; one can hardly imagine CNN choosing not to air or pursue a video of a man throwing his wife out of the window. Then again, mentalities could change with time and technological advances.

MBC is now revamping its main network site to integrate more user videos; while in Egypt, Khafagy sees this year’s introduction of high speed mobile networks in the country, known as 3G, as a key driver for wider distribution of amateur content. At that point, he says Dream may need to reconsider its relatively rigid policy, provided that clear ethical guidelines are established: “We’ll see how society reacts to the footage, whether it can be regarded as a valid source,” Khafagy explains. “We may try to create a code of ethics on how to use it.”

And with internet penetration relatively low across the region, new technologies could also bolster the trend by enabling greater social access to UGC and higher resolution videos. For now though, even if some of the most scandalous fare is not aired on the major Arab networks, the impact of user content will inevitably be felt on Arab society, thanks to the internet.

After the torture video led to an international outcry, Egyptian authorities, who had for years denied the existence of such practices, arrested the two officers in the case and charged them with sexual harassment. Egypt’s interior ministry, which apologized for what it dubbed as an isolated “error by one individual,” is now investigating another torture video, this time of a female detainee.

“I think these videos will have a huge impact on public opinion,” says Dream’s Khafagy. “The proof is that the government is taking action against these clips.”

For MBC’s Bakkar, soliciting a reaction is perhaps the best one can hope for at this point. Videos, especially controversial ones, “force the government to talk,” he explains, “because other people will talk.” In a region wrought with conflict and taboos, the thirst for answers can only increase, he adds. “People will be looking for information and the parties involved will have to respond.”