Blogging in Iran
Blogging has become a favourite tool of political activists everywhere, and a particular challenge to regimes used to keeping public debate under tight control. Nowhere is this more the case than in Iran, where tens of thousands of blogs have popped up since 2001, when an Iranian exile in Canada devised a way of blogging in Farsi. There are now some 65,000 live blogs written in Farsi, as well as several hundred written by Iranians in English.
Iran's rulers keep a firm grip on traditional media, monitoring the content of newspapers, radio and television broadcasts. Monitoring the blogs is harder, because there are so many sites and most bloggers write anonymously. The regime has still managed to filter and block provocative websites, and has arrested and imprisoned identifiable bloggers who have called too strongly for reform or stepped out of line in other ways. And web censorship looks likely to increase, following the election of conservative president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in June.
One of the best known bloggers in Iran is Mohammad Ali Abtahi. But he is an unexpected star: a cleric in his late 40s, he is a former parliamentarian and vice-president, and a close advisor to former president Mohammad Khatami. Abtahi uses his blog to speak his mind about politics, make fun of his rivals, and discourse on anything else that interests him.
[From the New Scientist.]