On the internet as surrogate meeting place

From Saudi women revel in online lives on GlobalPost:

In a country where about one-third of the population regularly goes online, the internet gives women “a place to vent out our frustrations and our dreams,“ said Reem Asaad, 37, a professor of banking and finance in the Saudi port city of Jeddah who blogs at reemasaad.blogspot.com.

This reminds me of danah boyd‘s research into teenagers’s use of social sites such as Facebook and MySpace. She has suggested teens use these sites for identity formation and community connection in the way they used to do in malls, parking lots and other public spaces that we’ve collectively chased them out of. Given Saudi Arabia’s severe restrictions on women in public spaces, I think a similar phenomenon is happening here.