Social Network Sites and Arabic Diglossia Between Threatening Modern Standard Arabic and Strengthening Colloquial Arabic

The present research paper aims to examine the effects of social network sites on Arabic. It tries to shed some light on one substantial phenomenon that the Arabic language is known for, which is diglossia. The latter clearly poses many challenges and many questions may arise. Therefore, 78 Arab users of Facebook participated in an online survey in order to investigate their use of Arabic language in the social network site, Facebook, and to what extent it can affect the Standard and Colloquial Arabic.