Iranian blogs

Blogging in Iran operates under special circumstances because the government restricts certain views. 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 Persian, 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 and Iranians blogs] keeps a list of Iranian blogs written in English. Iran is the third largest country of bloggers.

Timeline

2001

* 7 September - Salman Jariri publishes the first Persian blog using manual coding. His posts have no direct links, no place for readers' comments.
* 25 September - Hossein Derakhshan, a former journalist at a reformist newspaper starts his blog using manual coding.
* 5 November - Hossein Derakhshan publishes instructions on "How to make a blog in Persian" using Blogger.com's free service, in response to readers' requests.

2002

* 2 June - Cappuccino magazine is launched.
* 13 June - PersianBlog.com (The first free blog service in Persian) is launched by Ata Khalighi Sigaroudi [http://www.ata-khalighi.com] , Behrang Fooladi and Sahand Ghanoon.

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 prosecutor, 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
* 13 September - Mojtaba Saminejad is released from prison, after serving term.
* 11 October - Blogging courses starts in the holy city of Qom, the traditional home of Iran's religious establishment. They are run by the newly-established office of religious weblog expansion. [ [http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,1892562,00.html Iran's clerics caught up in blogging craze | Technology | The Guardian ] ]

2006

* Persian language was listed by Technorati among 10 most common languages among bloggers. [ [http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/persian/2006/11/post_132.html BBC Persian | وبلاگ بی بی سی فارسی | رشد وبلاگ نويسی در دنيا ] ]
* 14 August - President Ahmadinejad starts his multilingual blog with one long entry. [ [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4790005.stm BBC NEWS | Middle East | Iran's president launches weblog ] ]
* December: Mehrnoush Najafi Ragheb won city council election in Hamedan.
* 4 December: Massoumeh Ebtekar, the first female vice president of Iran starts her blog in Persian.

2007

* 24 December: Almost a year after starting her blog in Persian, Massoumeh Ebtekar starts her blog in English, under the title "Persian Paradox".

Directories

* [http://www.iraniansblogs.com Iranians' Blogs - A directory of Iranians' English Language blogs]
* [http://www.persianblog.ir Persian Blog]
* [http://www.blogfa.com BlogFa]
* [http://www.blogsky.com Blog Sky]
* [http://www.mihanblog.com Mihan Blog]
* [http://www.parsiblog.com Parsi blog]
* [http://www.jablogi.com Social Network Of Iranian(persian) Bloggers]

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

* Rahimi, Babak (September 2003). [http://www.payvand.com/news/03/sep/1156.html Cyberdissent: The Internet in Revolutionary Iran] . " Middle East Review of International Affairs, Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya ", 7(3).
*Doostdar, Alireza (Dec. 2004). [http://www.doostdar.com/articles/vsob.pdf "The Vulgar Spirit of Blogging": On Language, Culture, and Power in Persian Weblogestan] . "American Anthropologist" 106(4).
*Jensen, Peder Are Nøstvold (Sep. 2004). [http://wo.uio.no/as/WebObjects/theses.woa/wa/these?WORKID=21737 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). [http://www.danieldrezner.com/research/blogpaperfinal.pdf The Power and Politics of Blogs] .
*Simmons, Erin A. (Jun. 2005). [https://kb.osu.edu/dspace/bitstream/1811/371/1/BlogImpact.pdf The Impact of the Weblog: A Case Study of The United States and Iran] .
* Alexanian, Janet A. (Nov. 2006). [http://muse.jhu.edu/cgi-bin/access.cgi?uri=/journals/comparative_studies_of_south_asia_africa_and_the_middle_east/v026/26.1alexanian.pdf Publicly Intimate Online: Iranian Web Logs in Southern California] . "Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Duke University Press" 26(1)
* Halevi, Jordan. (March 2006). [http://www.persianimpediment.org/research/iwrpresults.pdf The Iranian Weblog Research Project: Survey Results] .
*Hendelman-Baavur, Liora (June 2007). [http://meria.idc.ac.il/journal/2007/issue2/jv11no2a6.html "Promises and Perils of Weblogistan: Online Personal Journals and the Islamic Republic of Iran"] . "The Middle East Review of International Affairs", 11(2).
* PetrossianL, Celine (2006). Liberating the Silenced: Iranian Bloggers in the Diaspora, California State University, Northridge.
* Sreberny, Annabelle (2007). 'Becoming Intellectual: The Blogestan and Public Political Space in the Islamic Republic', British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, vol.34, No. 3, pp. 267-286
* Kelly, John and Bruce Etling (April 2008). [http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/publications/2008/Mapping_Irans_Online_Public Mapping Iran's Online Public: Politics and Culture in the Persian Blogosphere] .

References

ee also

*Media of Iran
*Internet censorship in Iran