Blogging in Iran
Blogging in Iran operates under special circumstances as the Iranian government tends to discourage self-expression. Blogs in general tend to be unregulated compared to other forms of expression in Iranian society. This characteristic can account for the huge popularity of blogs especially among Iranian youths. As of October 2005, there are estimated to be about 700,000 Iranian blogs (out of an estimated total of 100 million worldwide), of which about 40,000-110,000 are active , mostly written in Farsi, the official language of Iran.
There are also many weblogs written by Iranians in English and other languages. Most of them, though, belong to expatriates who live in North America, Europe, Japan, etc. Blogs By Iranians keeps a list of Iranian blogs written in English.
Timeline
- 2001
- 7 September - Salman Jariri publishes the first Persian blog. [1]
- 5 November - Hossein Derakhshan publishes instructions on "How to make a blog in Persian" using Blogger.com's free service.
- 2002
- 2 June - Cappuccino magazine is launched.
- 21 June - PersianBlog is launched.
- 2003
- 20 April - Sina Motallebi, journalist and blogger is arrested.
- 26 September - Cafe Blog opens in north of Tehran.
- 24 November - Mohammad Ali Abtahi, then Vice President for Legal and Parliamentary Affairs, starts "Webnevesht", the first blog by a member of the Iranian cabinet.
- 2004
- 16 January - Protesting MPs on sit-in start a weblog.
- 6 June - Persian Blogging festival starts.
- November - Iranian blogger Mojtaba Saminejad arrested for writing about the arrests of three other bloggers
- 2005
- 5 January - Saeed Mortazavi, Tehran's Chief prosecuter, ordered major ISPs to filter PersianBlog and other blogging service websites.
- 27 January/12 February - Iranian blogger Mojtaba Saminejad briefly released, then rearrested
- October Blog Herald estimate: 700,000 Iranian blogs, of which about 10% are active
- November - Hossein Derakhshan banned from entering the USA for six months, allegedly because of his blog content [2]
- 2006
- 13 September - Mojtaba Saminejad was released from prison.
Tools
Directories
- Blogs by Iranians Directory of weblogs that Iranians write in English language, either from inside or outside Iran.
- PersianBlog Most active blogs on PersianBlog service.
- BlogFa The recently updated blogs on BlogFa.
- MihanBlog Most active blogs on PersianBlog service.
Related books
- We Are Iran: The Persian Blogs by Nasrin Alavi (Soft Skull Press /November 28, 2005) ISBN 1-933368-05-5
- We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People by Dan Gilmor (O'Reilly, 2004) ISBN 0-596-00733-7
Academic papers
- Doostdar, Alireza (Dec. 2004). "The Vulgar Spirit of Blogging": On Language, Culture, and Power in Persian Weblogestan. American Anthropologist 106(4).
- Jensen, Peder Are Nøstvold (Sep. 2004). A Case Study of Iranian English Language Weblogs, inside and outside of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
- Farrell, Henry and Drezner, Daniel W. (Aug. 2004). The Power and Politics of Blogs.
- Simmons, Erin A. (Jun. 2005). The Impact of the Weblog: A Case Study of The United States and Iran.
- Alexanian, Janet A. (Nov. 2006). Publicly Intimate Online: Iranian Web Logs in Southern California. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Duke University Press 26(1)
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Access Issues
A weblog on Iran, technology and pop culture, by Hossein Derakhshansays "Friends in Iran, journalists and technicians, are saying that judiciary officials have ordered all major internet service providers to filter all blogging services including PersianBlog, BlogSpot, Blogger, BlogSky, and even BlogRolling. They have also ordered to filter Orkut, Yahoo Personals and some other popular dating and social networking websites."
Slashdot contributor Bahamat says "I'm the Senior System Administrator for Anonymizer and we have a contract with Voice of America to provide free proxy service to Iran. It's based off of PrivateSurfing... Added features for the Iran proxy is full time SSL, URL encryption, Persian language support, and we switch the proxy website about once a month (every time the Iranian government blocks us). We perform checks on the service from within Iran to see if our site is actually blocked (yes, it works), and we maintain a database of all known e-mail addresses that we can detect as being located in Iran. Every time we switch the proxy site we send an e-mail informing them of the new free proxy location so the citizens of Iran can find it. The sites are also broadcast via radio and TV into Iran by the VOA. To be honest, we're usually about a day behind the blocks, due mostly to time zone differences."