Looking for Freedom: An Exploration of the Iranian Blogosphere

‘Looking for Freedom: An Exploration of the Iranian Blogosphere’

A study submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Librarianship

at

THE UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD

By

Alexis Rigby

September 2007

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Acknowledgments

For Max Mitchell

Many Thanks to Andrew Cox and my dear friends and wonderful hosts S.A, D.Y and Y.M.

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Abstract

This investigation of the Iranian blogosphere provides an account of the impact that Internet censorship has had on blog discourse. It focuses on a sample of English-language Iranian weblogs inside Iran and the Iranian diaspora to investigate how their experiences of blogging differs in terms of content, character and motivation differ. The methods used to generate the data include a literature review and research trip, an online survey and a textual analysis of blog content. In analysing the data the researcher grounds theory in relation to previous research conducted by Herring et al (2004) and Nardi, Schiano and Gumbrecht (2004). It is a qualitative inquiry that establishes why and how blog patterns have emerged and what motivates these bloggers to maintain weblogs.

With the aim to explore processes of self-censorship it also considers how Iran’s long history of censoring activity and cultural paradoxes has influenced the spread of Internet access. Despite government attempts to control content through limiting connection speeds, blocking access to popular websites and arresting bloggers, Persian is the third most populous blogging language. Tough policies on freedom of expression and crackdowns on print media have all increased the importance of the Internet and consequently blogs as platforms for self-expression and self-empowerment. With this rise in active filtering Iranian bloggers have created new methods to counter limitations and undermine restrictions on social interactions.

The main findings of this research suggest that blogs in the diaspora are much more similar to those inside Iran than anticipated as bloggers post about similar topics for similar audiences. Self-censorship is a process commonly found across the entire Iranian blogosphere as authors seek to avoid filtering and the loss of their audience inside Iran. The strategies of self-censorship highlighted by this research include: the omission of direct personal evaluation, retreats to personal experiences, disclaimers, conversational transcripts and anonymity or pseudonymity.

Word Count: 307

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Contents Page

Contents ...... 4

1. Introduction...... 6

1.1 Subject of Investigation...... 6 1.2 Aims and Objectives ...... 8 1.2.1 Research Questions...... 9 1.3 Motivations ...... 9 1.4 Methodology and Methods Overview...... 10 1.5 Dissertation Structure...... 11

2. Methodology ...... 13

2.1 Methodological Strategies...... 13 2.1.1 Qualitative Characteristics...... 14 2.1.2 Rationale ...... 15 2.2 Methods of Data Collection ...... 16 2.2.1 Literature Review and Research Trip ...... 16 2.2.2 Survey ...... 18 2.2.3 Textual Analysis ...... 19 2.2.3.1 Research Sample and Selection Criteria...... 21 2.2.3.1.1 Insiders...... 22 2.2.3.1.2 Outsiders ...... 23 2.3 Method of Data Analysis ...... 24 2.3.1 Grounded Theory...... 24 2.4 Ethical Approval and Research Practicalities ...... 25 2.5 Timetable of Study Overview ...... 26

3. Literature Review ...... 27

3.1 A Culture of Paradoxes? ...... 27 3.1.1 Pre-Islamic Histories and the Islamic Revolution ...... 27 3.1.2 A Veiled Society...... 31 3.1.3 Education and National ‘Brain Drain’...... 33 3.1.4 Conclusion ...... 35 3.2 The Internet Predicament ...... 36 3.2.1 A Platform of Communication ...... 36 3.2.2 Access, Control and Regulation...... 38 3.2.3 Uncensoring the Censored...... 41 3.2.4 Conclusion ...... 42 3.3 The Weblog Phenomenon...... 43 3.3.1 Definition and Common Characteristics...... 43 3.3.2 Style, Purpose and Genre...... 44 3.3.3 The Quiet Revolution – Iranian Blogging ...... 46 3.3.4 Conclusion ...... 48

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4. Findings and Discussion ...... 50

4.1 Quantitative Survey Results...... 50 4.2 Qualitative Survey Results...... 52 4.3 Qualitative Textual Analysis Observations...... 58 4.3.1 Object-oriented Motivations and Blog Characterisations...... 58 4.3.1.1 Update Others on Activities and Whereabouts/Journals and Notebooks.... 59 4.3.1.2 Express Opinions to Influence Others/Filters and Notebooks ...... 60 4.3.1.3 Seek Others’ Opinions and Feedback/Journals ...... 61 4.3.1.4 ‘Think by Writing’/Filters, Journals and Notebooks...... 62 4.3.1.5 Release Emotional Tension/Filters and Notebooks...... 63 4.4 Self-censoring Linguistic Strategies ...... 64 4.4.1 Reporting Experiences and Personal Evaluation...... 64 4.4.2 Metaphor and Analogy ...... 66 4.4.3 Anonymity and Pseudonymity...... 67 4.5 Discussion Summary...... 69

5. Conclusion and Recommendations ...... 72

5.1 Recommendations for Further Research...... 74

6. Bibliography ...... 75

7. Appendices...... 84

7.1 Glossary...... 84 7.2 Images – Filtered Content and Connection Speeds...... 86 7.4 March of the Bloggers...... 95 7.5 Images – Bad Hejab ...... 101

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1. Introduction

1.1 Subject of Investigation

Internet usage in Iran has undergone rapid growth in recent years, with an increasing number of weblogs written by Iranians. According to Reporters without Borders (2004: 1) ‘the Internet has grown faster in Iran than any other Middle Eastern country since 2000 and has become an important medium, providing fairly independent news and an arena for vigorous political discussion for more than three million users’. Although the impact of Internet access is difficult to measure (Doostdar, 2004: 653) it has left a sizable impression on Iranian culture by permitting users to explore alternative (non-state controlled) news sources, experience international cultures and interact in mixed gendered social spaces (Reporters without Borders, 2004: 1).

In 2004 an estimate of Iranian weblogs totalled around sixty-four thousand (NITLE Blog Census, 2004 in Alavi, 2005), yet the Blog Herald (Riley, 2005) has more recently reported a growth of well over double that. Riley (2005) suggests that during October 2005 Iranian weblogs accounted for around two hundred thousand to seven hundred thousand of the approximately seventy-five million weblogs online, where forty thousand to one hundred and ten thousand were thought to be active. As the current Internet penetration figure, that is the dispersion of Internet access across the entire Iranian population, stands at around eleven per cent (Waters, 2007) this number is remarkable, especially when compared to the fifty known bloggers of Iraq (Alavi, 2005: 1).

Since 2004 the estimates of Internet users have also risen with one in five Iranians now thought to be accessing web content regularly (Alavi, 2007: 17). With approximately seven and a half million Internet users in Iran’s total population of seventy million Persian has become one of the world’s most populous blogging languages1, in spite of wavering access to popular blog hosting sites such as http://www.blogger.com,

1 Persian (also known as Farsi) is now ranked the third or fourth most widely used language of blogging in the entire blogosphere (Halevi, 2006; Alavi, 2005 and Tabrizi and Sarafan in Slavin, 2005).

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http://www.persianblog.com and http://www.blogfa.com (ibid). For Halevi (2006: 2) the popularity of weblogs in Iran has ‘recently mushroomed’ as a result of the high degree of anonymity the Internet affords blog authors, its potentially vast international audiences and the encountering of social interaction. In offering ‘a space to tell jokes, share music files and photos, satirically lampoon Iranian rulers with clever photo-shop doctoring, and generally share personal experiences’ weblog authors are provided with a platform to develop and explore culture outside the strict moral guidelines of the Islamic Republic (Molavi in Vanden Heuvel, 2005: 1). Readers, on the other hand, are presented with unique snapshots of emergent Iranian culture and an opportunity to tap into its ‘closed’ society (Alavi, 2005: 16).

As an elusive, largely unfettered mode of interactive communication the Internet has aroused government suspicions about the infiltration of western or un-Islamic material into Iran and the distribution of content critical of the Islamic Republic. Consequently, in order to ‘protect the public’ the Iranian government has developed tough policies to control Internet usage and curtail freedom of expression, imposing strict limits on access and censoring websites with immoral subject matter. It is now mandatory for privately owned Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to ‘adhere to both the Telecommunication Company of Iran and the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance’, who have ordered ISPs to block all access to sites listed on the government’s blacklist and make their users promise not to request sites with un-Islamic content (Pradhan, 2007: 1 and Reporters without Borders, 2004: 1). Other common methods used by the government to censor online content include ‘IP address blocking, DNS filtering and redirection, URL filtering, packet filtering and resetting Internet connections’ (Pradhan, 2007: 1-2).

The Iranian government is now considered to have ‘one of the most repressive Internet censorship regimes in the world’ (Pradhan, 2007: 1). However, regardless of the enduring threat of state censorship and the recent imprisonment of online journalists, attempts to control network access with sophisticated filtering systems, limited bandwidths and slow connection speeds blogs are opening up Iranian society and culture (Vanden Heuvel, 2005: 1). More Iranians are turning to the Internet as an ‘efficient means of

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communications among the youth and a vehicle for journalists to propagate messages and call for more freedoms and reforms in the country’ (Basmenji, 2005: 52). Along with satellite television and mobile phones the Internet, including instant messaging, email, the web and blogs, has fundamentally changed how people in the Middle East communicate, not only with each other but also with the outside world.

1.2 Aims and Objectives

Previous studies of Iranian weblogs have generally focused on the demographics of blog readership (Halevi, 2006), their impact (Simmons, 2005) and the pervasiveness of Internet censorship (Jensen, P., 2004 and OpenNet Initiative, 2006). The purpose of this research project is to develop some of the central findings of research conducted by Jensen, P. (2004) and the OpenNet Initiative (2006) by investigating the practice of self- censorship in the Iranian blogosphere and the impact that the Iranian government’s attitude and actions has had on how Iranians use weblogs. The central objectives in this exploratory investigation are:

• To provide an account of how and why Iranians use weblogs; • To explore the impact that Internet censorship has on the Iranian blogosphere; • To investigate the linguistic strategies Iranians in Iran use to express politicised opinions in comparison to the Iranian diaspora; • And to consider the wider influence of blogging on freedom of expression in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

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1.2.1 Research Questions

The research questions posed by this research thus include:

1. How does the experience of blogging differ for Iranians inside and outside of the Islamic Republic of Iran? 2. In terms of content, character and motivation, how do blogs inside Iran compare to Iranian blogs outside of Iran? 3. What impact, if any, do technical and moral restrictions imposed by the Islamic Republic on Internet access have on blog discourse?

1.3 Motivations

As blogging is a relatively new phenomenon, a large body of academic research is yet to be established, especially with regards to Iranian blogging since its explosion in 2001. However, in becoming an influential branch of the Internet and media landscape weblogs in general have attracted increasing amounts of commentary and media speculation alongside the development of Web 2.0 – type functionality, social networking and ‘wikis’. With the release of Nasrin Alavi’s book We are Iran in 2005, Shirin Ebadi’s2 autobiography Iran Awakening (2006), the film adaptation of Marjane Satrapi’s best- selling graphic novel, Persepolis and Rageh Omar’s Inside Iran, a BBC documentary about Omar’s travels in ‘one of the most misunderstood countries in the world’ (Omar, 2007) there is also growing popular interest in Iranian youth culture and the Islamic Republic’s current political climate.

Media reporting about Iran tends to fall into two categories: exaggerated stereotypical portrayals of Iran as a land of ‘glowering Ayatollahs, book-burning mobs, fatwas of death and black chadors’ or clichéd accounts of a ‘it’s not what you’d think’ modern Iran (Hitchens, 2007; Cooke, 2007; Antonowicz, 2007 and Hodgson, 2007). Although in the

2 An Iranian human rights lawyer who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003.

Alexis Rigby: 060111799 9 Looking for Freedom: An Exploration of the Iranian Blogosphere latter attempts are made to generate greater understandings of Iranian culture they often fall into the trap of offering readers little more than alternative sweeping statements about Tehran fashion, encounters with pro-western Iranians and alcohol smuggling (ibid). The initial attraction of Iranian blogging for this investigation was a desire to explore this modern Iran represented in the media and the misconceptions and cultural paradoxes of Iran’s Islamic condition.

In undertaking preliminary research to inform the dissertation proposal I found an increasing online presence of undergraduate researchers such as Jonathan Lundqvist (http://jturn.qem.se/), Celine Petrossian (http://www.iraniantruth.com), Caroline Nellemann and Christian Alexander (both contributors of http://soundsiranian.wordpress.com). Within these blogs they each comment on their own research into the impact blogging has on Iranian society and highlight the gaps between media speculation and academic research. This further piqued my curiosity concerning the ways in which Iranians use weblogs to create political discourse and promote free expression.

The central motivation of this investigation however was to provide an account of inspiring Iranian weblogs I had actively followed for the last two years. With a background in cultural studies and undergraduate research on youth subcultures it seemed a natural progression to research how new media has impacted youth culture and what influence it has had in the Iranian diaspora.

1.4 Methodology and Methods Overview

The exploratory nature of this research project favours a qualitative approach to investigate the perceptions, values and viewpoints of blog authors. It is inductive in that it uses specific cases to form theoretical conclusions that arise to gain an understanding of why something happens. For this purpose a qualitative methodological approach was

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used in order to interpret the meaning of weblogs and to establish theory regarding why Iranians use weblogs and for what purpose.

The methods used to collect data include a literature review and research trip to Iran, an online survey of blog authors and a textual analysis of a sample of Iranian weblogs (written either inside or outside Iran). The literature review not only functions as a basis for the investigation by sharing and relating the research context and history of the problem, but also as a process to acquire knowledge about its effectiveness and highlight gaps in previous research.

In order to analyse the data collected for this investigation the framework of grounded theory has been used to guide the analysis process. It involved the rigorous examination of the collected data to identify themes and patterns, which help to explain, understand and interpret the situation that has been investigated. Its purpose is to provide evidence of ideas in support of the research’s conclusions in order to illustrate why and how a theme or pattern emerges. Yet due to the limited timeframe for this investigation data was coded in relation to previous research to further illustrate how Iranian weblogs inside Iran differ to those written outside Iran with regards to findings concerning the wider blogosphere.

1.5 Dissertation Structure

Chapter Description 1. Introduction This chapter introduces the research project giving a general overview of the research aims, questions, motivations and methodology. 2. Methodology This chapter explores the methodological approach and methods used to collect and analyse the data for this investigation. It discusses why decisions were made and

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explains the processes undertaken. 3. Literature Review The literature review outlines the research context and emphasises the research problem by highlighting gaps in the field of research and the limitations of previous investigations. 4. Findings and Discussion This chapter discusses the investigation’s findings in relation to the literature review to interpret observations and lead the reader to new insight into the research area. 5. Conclusion and Recommendations In this chapter the investigation is summarised and concluded to interpret the research’s findings. It also recommends possible avenues for further research and investigation. 6. Bibliography An alphabetical list of literature used within this investigation. 7. Appendices Included within this appendix chapter is a glossary of terms used throughout the investigation and their meanings for quick reference, a list of so-called ‘cyber- dissidents’ or bloggers imprisoned by the government, a copy of the survey questions and images discussed within the body of research.

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2. Methodology

A qualitative methodological approach was chosen to allow for a deeper interpretation of the data collected. This section of the report explains the theoretical framework of qualitative research and justifies this approach for an exploration of the Iranian blogosphere. It also discusses the methods used to collect and analyse data, the research sample, selection criteria, research limitations and ethics as well as the wider implications of ‘sacrificing scope for detail’ (Silverman, 2005: 9).

2.1 Methodological Strategies

In general, research strategies can be divided into two broad distinctions that relate to the deductive or inductive nature of the methods used to collect and analyse data. Deductive or ‘positivist’ approaches refer to quantitative research designs and methods to collect, analyse and measure numerical (quantifiable) data whereas inductive approaches rely on qualitative research designs and methods to interpret multiple realities, behaviours, meanings and influences, etc. in words.

The differences between these two theoretical frameworks emerge from the tendencies of their contrasting epistemologies. Quantitative researchers incorporate the practices and norms of the natural scientific model to test a theory, whilst qualitative researchers tend to reject the practices and norms of the natural scientific model in favour of constructing theory through an emphasis on interpretations of social reality. Therefore while the ontological orientation, the focus on categories and relationships of concepts, of quantitative research emphasises objectivism, qualitative research emphasises constructionism (Bryman, 2004: 19-20).

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2.1.1 Qualitative Characteristics

Inductive research, the defining feature of qualitative investigation, is an attempt to find out about specific concerns through an exploration of ideas. It is an interpretation of meanings or behaviours found within data, typically words rather than statistical trends, to generate theory (Silverman, 2005: 9). This constructionist approach to research means that methods used to collect and analyse data are not separate from the subject of study or standardised in a natural scientific manner. Usually qualitative approaches are dependent on the research context and thus not constrained by predetermined variables characteristic of quantitative research; ‘in qualitative research, theory is supposed to be an outcome of an investigation rather than something that precedes it’ (Bryman, 2004: 268). Thus the theory and categorisation of a phenomenon emerges as a result of the collection and analysis of data not because of it.

For Patton (2002:14) qualitative research ‘methods facilitate [the] study of issues in depth and detail’ typically producing ‘a wealth of detailed information about a much smaller number of people and cases’. In a similar argument Silverman (2005, 10) claims that ‘qualitative researchers believe that qualitative methods can provide a deeper understanding of social phenomena than would be obtained from purely quantitative data’ because it is a flexible, context-based methodological design that allows issues and questions to be further investigated as they materialise. Yet while this approach to research increases ‘the depth of understanding of the cases and situations’ it ‘reduces the generalisability’ of the results (Patton, 2002:14).

In terms of the reliability, replicability and validity of qualitative research Bryman (2004: 273) proposes the concept of ‘trustworthiness’ or ‘authenticity’ as criteria for evaluation. Generally the concepts of reliability and validity are thought to be inapplicable to or inappropriate for the assessment of qualitative research (due to a preoccupation with measurement) and so Bryman (ibid) uses the notion of credibility, transferability,

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dependability and confirmability to parallel those concepts geared towards quantitative strategies.

Qualitative findings fundamentally depend upon the construction of meanings from interpretations of data within a shifting social environment. Essentially they seek to determine whether the research findings are subjectively consistent whilst recognising that a variety of interpretations of qualitative research are possible.

Although theory-gathering processes represent qualitative research strategies in nature there are theory-testing cases found within the field of qualitative research and vice versa. What this highlights is the difficulty in placing too much emphasis on what differentiates the two processes and the idea that qualitative research makes up for what quantitative research lacks.

2.1.2 Rationale

For this research project a qualitative approach was chosen to help understand the complex social phenomenon of blogging and its influence in a state where free expression is restricted. The research is an inquiry into the patterns or theories that develop within a particular setting in order to investigate context-specific understandings of the phenomena. It is more realistic in this case to both recognise and embrace the complexities of context based research so that the observations and interpretations of the data are not in isolation. The construction of meaning and the impact interpretations may have on blog discourse are central to the overall findings of the research as they represent the overall character of qualitative analysis.

The main concern of this investigation is to study the perceptions, values and author viewpoints to understand why and how blog patterns emerge and whether restrictions such as slow Internet connection speeds or government censorship is affecting blog discourse. It is an attempt to compare how Iranians inside Iran use weblogs in contrast to

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Iranian expatriates. In applying a qualitative theoretical framework of inquiry a more detailed description and investigation of the text may be accounted for which a purely quantitative study would lack. To approach this research topic from a quantitative angle would mean to assume a framework of analysis that is understood the same by everyone rather than to discover a framework of interpretation to judge what a particular phenomena means to a particular set of people.

2.2 Methods of Data Collection

2.2.1 Literature Review and Research Trip

A literature review has three main functions: to acquire knowledge about the research problem, gain an understanding about the key concerns of the subject matter and discover what research has already been carried out – how it was done and what was found. For Hart (1998: 13) a literature review is,

…The selection of available documents (both published and unpublished) on the topic, which contain information, ideas, data and evidence written from a particular standpoint to fulfil certain aims or express certain views on the nature of the topic and how it is to be investigated, and the effective evaluation of these documents in relation to the research being proposed.

Whilst conducting this research project, Iran, Iranian weblogs, Internet censorship and blogging in general have experienced increased interest from the media. This is visible not only online but also in print media. Mainstream news sources such as the BBC, The Guardian, Mail on Sunday, The New Statesman, New Internationalist and the Daily Mirror have all at some point throughout the duration of this project carried commentary or editorials on issues central to the analysis and have helped to further contextualise the main objectives of the research problem.

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Due to the limited availability of books covering the topic of Iranian blogging the majority of texts referenced within the literature review are journal articles, research papers, online initiatives and news sources collected via mediating services such as The University of Sheffield’s electronic resource links, Google Scholar and bibliographic references made within similar papers or theses. Keyword searching has been the main form of information retrieval using words such as Iran, weblog (blog and blogging), filtering, censorship and the Internet in conjunction with one another. Other papers such as Herring et al (2004) and Nardi, Schiano and Gumbrecht (2004) discussing the wider weblog phenomenon have also been included in order to design a strategy of textual analysis referring to the motivations and types of weblogs used within the study.

The most influential book for this research has been Alavi’s (2005) anthology of Iranian weblogs, We Are Iran. Within this book she highlights the preoccupations of a dynamic youthful online community through a discussion of the common themes and recurring topics found in the Iranian blogosphere, offering the reader an historically grounded insight into the Islamic revolution, the Iran-Iraq war, women’s rights, education, media censorship and Iranian youth culture. Other books of note have been ones more focused on Iranian culture in general such as Tehran Blues (Basmenji, 2005), Iran Today (Hiro, 2005) and The Iranians (Mackey, 1998).

The difficulty with reading about a country as paradoxical as Iran is the struggle to fully relate to and understand the experiences of people living there. This is especially due to the one-dimensional representations of Iran often found in mainstream media. In conducting the initial stages of this investigation in Iran this research has greatly benefited from the unique opportunity I had to observe behaviours, participate in the everyday lives of young Iranians, discuss blog practices in conversation and experience first-hand the frustrations met by slow Internet speeds and filtered content3. Thanks to contacts made whilst in Iran this project has further benefited from a much greater response rate to the online survey as links have been passed between friends, the wider

3 See appendix 7.2 for illustrated comparisons of connection speeds and the result of trying to access blocked webpages.

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blogging community and posted in Persian-language forums. Some survey responses also featured a higher degree of detail than previously anticipated, possibly due to the trust gained from meeting a number of those respondents in person whilst in Iran.

2.2.2 Survey

The purpose of creating an online survey was to allow Iranian bloggers to directly respond to the research questions4. It was an attempt to gather initial views and comments regarding how and why Iranians use weblogs. The survey provided a broad overview of the central issues to be developed within a textual analysis of blog content. Included within the survey were multiple-choice questions concerning the respondent’s demographics and blogging habits. Consisting of twenty-five questions, both quantative and qualitative, the survey also provided an opportunity to add any further thoughts or comments at the end. Quantitative questions (age, educational attainment, etc.) were asked to provide a context for individual responses.

In formulating the survey it was necessary to avoid being overtly political or antagonistic towards the Iranian government. For this reason the importance of the later questions about blogging patterns were left open in order for the respondent to provide as little, or as much information as they saw fit. Other questions such as ‘have you ever closed down your weblog?’ and ‘what, if any, subjects do you avoid blogging about?’ were a result of conversations had with young Iranians during my trip to Iran.

Due to the nature of these questions the survey did not require the respondents to either reveal their identities or provide further contact details. Also, all of the questions were made entirely optional. The downside of this was that a number of incomplete surveys were submitted but overall it meant that respondents were more likely to provide greater detail in answering questions that were particularly relevant to them.

4 See appendix 7.3 for survey template.

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Before being placed online the survey was piloted five times by the Iranian blogger DDMMYYYY, another Iranian blogger who wished to remain anonymous, the dissertation’s supervisor, a group of friends and a research methods Masters student at the University of Sheffield. In one of the five survey pilots it was highlighted that non-native English speakers may find some of the wording in the questions difficult to understand, for example ‘maintained’ rather than ‘had’ in question ten; ‘how many years have you had a weblog?’ and ‘what do you blog about?’ rather than ‘what is your blog about?’ Others suggested separating questions so that only one question was asked at a time and including questions about the impact of blogging on other information sources such as the news.

A link to the questionnaire was sent out via email to a sample of bloggers both inside and outside Iran as well as being linked from http://www.lexrigby.com, http://iranianblogproject.blogspot.com and http://wiki.lexrigby.com/pimki/published/ and circulated via word of mouth by other respondents and their friends. From July 3rd to August 1st a total of thirty-four completed surveys were collected although forty-five respondents provided answers for the first five questions and forty-three for the following five questions.

2.2.3 Textual Analysis

For McKee (2003: 63) a textual analysis is a methodology for gathering data to ‘make an educated guess at some of the most likely interpretations that might be made of that text’. In doing a textual analysis, ‘we’re interested in finding out likely interpretations, not in deciding which of them is the most correct’ (ibid). For these purposes a textual analysis was chosen as a method to investigate how and why Iranians use weblogs to record personal experiences, comment on political issues and share knowledge about Iranian culture. In looking at how Iranians use weblogs to construct meaning it became an ‘attempt to study the organisation of language above the sentence, or above the clause, and therefore to study larger linguistic units’ (Stubbs in Widdowson, 2004: 1).

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A framework of analysis was constructed based on the grounded theory of previous research projects, conducted by Herring et al (2004) and Nardi, Schiano and Gumbrecht (2004), and discussions with my dissertation supervisor. The aim was to characterise common features and types of weblogs found within this sample and the motivations of Iranian bloggers to maintain a weblog, despite the difficulties in doing so.

Having followed Iranian weblogs for the past twelve months I already had an awareness of some strategies used by Iranian bloggers to cope with censorship and the risks associated with writing about controversial subjects, i.e. conversational transcripts and metaphors (rather than direct statements). This awareness led to general assumptions about what I expected to find from which a list of questions and notes of interest were developed.

These were used to compare blog patterns and themes between bloggers inside Iran (insiders) and bloggers outside Iran (outsiders) to assess whether living outside Iran meant that Iranian bloggers were more likely to make explicit criticisms of the state. Essentially the purpose of this textual analysis was to gather data concerning the points listed below, to determine the impact that active filtering has on the Iranian blogosphere:

• What the blog is about – use of tags, categories and links; • What type of weblog is it – journal, filter or knowledge log; • What the author’s motivations are to write a weblog; • How discourse is constructed to create meaning; • Examples of entries which attempt to say something more than what is clearly written; • Pseudonymity and self-censorship (that is linguistic strategies used to discuss and pass comment on sensitive issues); • And evidence of external impacts, which may affect the blog discourse.

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As texts, weblogs represent both language and social constructions, which engage with both linguistic and social theoretical issues. Textual analyses thus seek to examine the linguistic formation of texts and the cause/effect relationships between social events and language discourse to interpret the social effects of texts and how these can bring about changes in our knowledge of events, fundamentally altering our beliefs, attitudes and values. In exploring the forms, meanings and effects of texts the consideration of how texts are read and interpreted are taken into consideration to assess how meanings are constructed (Fairclough, 2003: 13-14). Therefore in examining the text developments used in weblogs, arguably, multiple social interpretations could bring about changes in our knowledge of Iran and understandings of Iranian culture to undermine stereotypical portrayals of Iran found in mainstream discourse.

2.2.3.1 Research Sample and Selection Criteria

In selecting blogs for the research sample the following criteria was used. First and foremost the weblog in question must be written in English and authored by an individual or group with Iranian heritage. It is also necessary for those weblogs to feature topics central to this evaluation, including political, social, economic and technological issues that address the government or state, human rights, filtering activity and the role of women in modern Iranian culture. Of particular interest are posts, which express opinions contrary to the strict guidelines and press laws that regulate Iranian media publications and public freedom of expression.

A combination of Technorati and Google’s blog search, an online blog catalogue (http://www.blogcatalog.com), Hossein Derakhshan’s directory of Iranian weblogs – http://blogsbyiranian.com – and numerous external blog links from other Iranian weblogs were used to identify popular yet relevant sites of interest for this sample. At the time of selection (May/June 2007) the following weblogs had all been updated within the last couple of months and included posts on current issues such as police crackdowns on ‘Bad

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Hejab5’ and the International Women’s Day marches. The consistency of those updates, however, varied in frequency, length and quality.

2.2.3.1.1 Insiders

‘Insiders’ refer to blogs written inside Iran by Iranians or in the case of View from Iran an Iranian and his American wife.

In-depth analysis DDMMYYYY – http://www.ddmmyyyy.org Inside Iran – http://jadi.civilblog.org Pinkfloydish (pre-move to America) – http://www.pinkfloydish.com/english/ Under Underground – http://yaserb.blogspot.com/ View from Iran (pre-move to Amsterdam) –

http://viewfromiran.blogspot.com Brief analysis Adventures of Mr Behi (pre-move to Libya) – http://mrbehi.blogs.com/i/ Damn To… – http://damnto.blogspot.com/ Eyes Wide Shut – http://blog.hamidreza.com/ Faith Today – http://cyberfaith.blogspot.com/ Forever Under Construction – http://homeyra.wordpress.com/ Insomnia Times – http://insomnia-times.blogspot.com/ Lost for Words – http://blog.salehoffline.com/ MidEast Youth – http://www.mideastyouth.com/category/blog/iran/ Rotten Gods – http://rottengods.blogspot.com/ Tehran Post – http://ord-per.blogspot.com/

5 See appendix 7.1 for explanation and appendix 7.5 for imagery.

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2.2.3.1.2 Outsiders

‘Outsiders’ refer to blogs written by Iranians outside Iran i.e. the Iranian diaspora.

In-depth analysis City Boy Blog – http://cityboyblog.com Iranian Prospect – http://omidmemarian.blogspot.com Kamangir (Archer) – http://kamangir.net Opium and Saffron – http://opiumandsaffron.blogspot.com Plateau of Iran – http://plateauofiran.wordpress.com Brief analysis A Glinting Glimpse from Above the Wall – http://abovethewall2.blogspot.com/ Another Irani Online – http://benevis-dige.blogspot.com/ For a Democratic Secular Iran – http://azarmehr.blogspot.com/ Iranian Woman – http://zaneirani.blogspot.com/ Iranians for Human Rights and Democracy – http://www.i4hrd.blogspot.com/ Kash Newsroom – http://kashreports.blogspot.com/ Lady Sun – http://www.ladysun.net/ MidEast Youth – http://www.mideastyouth.com/category/blog/iran/ Persian Emperor (pre-move to Iran) – http://meganima.blogspot.com/ Persian Perspective – http://persianperspective.wordpress.com/

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2.3 Method of Data Analysis

2.3.1 Grounded Theory

Grounded theory as described by Strauss and Corbin (1998 in Bryman, 2004: 401) is a method of analysis used to derive theory from data that has been ‘systematically gathered and analysed through the research process’. It is the practice of triangulation in which data collection, analysis and theory ‘stand in close relationship to one another’ to provide evidence of and support for the research findings (ibid). In general, strategies of data analysis refer to the framework used by a researcher to guide the analysis of data. These frameworks are often described as ‘iterative’ as they incorporate ‘a repetitive interplay between the collection and analysis of data’ (Bryman, 2004: 399). Consequently the process of data analysis begins shortly after the initial stages of collection in order to shape and influence the direction of the data collection process.

For the purposes of this investigation the idea of grounded theory was used to rigorously analyse the data to establish and categorise themes and patterns as they emerge. Due to the limited time frame allowed for this research project it seemed more logical to code the data sets in relation to prior assumptions made about the content and previous research conducted within the field. This decision was made in order to reach theoretical saturation earlier in the process of data collection. The motivations of blogging, outlined by Nardi, Schiano and Gumbrecht (2004: 225) were used along with blog categorisations described by Herring et al (2004: 9-10) to consider why Iranians use weblogs and what they use them for. Whereas labels given to the linguistic strategies used within weblogs grew directly out of subject concepts and meaning constructs initiated by the data collection process. From a sample of thirty Iranian weblogs the ten most consistent with previous research were chosen and subsequently used to further explore the research problem and formulate hypothetical explanations of how Iranians use weblogs.

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2.4 Ethical Approval and Research Practicalities

Censorship in Iran is a politically sensitive subject to investigate. There are a number of cases in which Iranians inside Iran have been arrested and imprisoned for their online activities6 and this has influenced the data collection method. Preserving the anonymity and safety of survey respondents and personal informants in Iran has been of utmost importance. This has allowed for greater freedom in exploring the personal opinions of these respondents regarding the impact and influence that blogging has in Iran. Prior to their participation respondents were made aware of the research aims, objectives, methodological approach and given the option to ask questions before taking part. In line with the University of Sheffield’s guidance on ethics approval a form was submitted directly to the dissertation’s supervisor ahead of commencing the data collection process. Information used within the textual analysis was collected via the Internet and consequently posed no greater risk than those taken by blogging in the first instance.

A significant restriction on this project was the language barrier. With no knowledge of Persian language the scope of the research was restricted to the minority of Iranian weblogs that are bilingual or written exclusively in English. While it is not a major limitation due to the accessibility of English-language weblogs (Jensen, P., 2004 and Simmons, 2005) it can be argued that in limiting the scope of the research potentially critical observations may be overlooked or missed.

As with any research project there are practical implications such as time and resource constraints, which can affect the overall success of the investigation. Problems also arise from the ephemeral nature of electronic information. Over the course of the research project blogging has continued, with new posts being added whilst others deleted, some blogs moved to different blog hosting services and others became dormant. One blog, The Iranian Plateau, also restricted access to registered users only as of July 2007 and ceased blogging in August 2007.

6 See appendix 7.4 March of the Bloggers for a list of known bloggers arrested for their online activities.

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To manage time effectively a project plan and Gantt chart was produced in the early stages of the research process to visualise targets and keep work progressing within a realistic time frame. Initially I had planned to conduct a large proportion of this research whilst in Iran but upon reflection I feel that this was unrealistic. Due to the difficulties in accessing information central to this research problem and the slow Internet connection speeds, as a result of active government filtering, it was not only impractical but also a risk I was not willing take. Instead by using this time to embrace the Iranian culture, immerse myself in conversation with Iranians and reflect upon the literature already gathered I gained a much clearer understanding of the research subject and context.

2.5 Timetable of Study Overview

4/06/07 2/07/07 9/07/07 6/08/07 3/09/07 11/06/07 18/06/07 25/06/07 16/07/07 23/07/07 30/07/07 13/08/07 20/08/07 27/08/07

1 Literature Review/Methodology

2 Research Trip to Iran

3 Questionnaire Design & Survey Pilot

4 Survey Published Online

5 Textual Analysis

6 Survey Respondents Data Analysis

7 Final Write Up/Revisions

8 Hand In

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3. Literature Review

In a review of the current literature available on Iranian blogging three main themes have emerged which are used here to structure its findings, providing an overview of the research subject, explaining its background and synthesising previous research. ‘A Culture of Paradoxes?’ emerged through readings of Iranian history and cultural heritage. It discusses the wider research context to highlight Iran’s complex religious governance and pre-Islamic traditions in contrast to Iran’s youth, struggling to balance the religiosity of Iranian society and their modern aspirations. To gauge an understanding of the impact that the Internet has had in Iran ‘The Internet Predicament’ explores the development of Internet censorship and filtering activity to address ‘The Weblog Phenomenon’. This concluding section considers the genealogy of weblogs and their importance as drivers for free expression within a country where freedom of expression is subject to the caveat of being in accordance with Islamic values and tradition.

3.1 A Culture of Paradoxes?

3.1.1 Pre-Islamic Histories and the Islamic Revolution

Iran has a long and tumultuous past of autocratic rule from the Qajars (1781-1925) to the Pahlavis (1925-1979) to the Islamic Republic (1979-present) and dissatisfaction with the country’s leaders is a common feature in tracing its history (Hiro, 2005; Keddie, 2003 and Mackey, 1996). With a mix of language (Persian/Farsi, Turkish and Kurdish), ethnicity (Persians, Aryans, Azeris, Azerbaijanis and Kurds), and religion (Zoroastrianism, Christianity, Judaism and Islam) Mackey (1996: 4) suggests that Iranian identity is the greatest paradox found within Iran. Influenced by the cultural traditions of the pre-Islamic Iranian plateau from the fifth century B.C. and the Shia7 sect of Islam, displacing Zoroastrianism as the state religion in the sixteenth century A.D., Iranian national identity is a complex interlocking of two traditions (ibid: 5). It is the

7 See appendix 7.1 for meaning.

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juxtaposition of Persian with Farsi, Persia with Iran, Zoroastrianism with Islam and tradition with modernity.

For Keddie (2003: 1) the roots of modern Iran are those planted by the 1979 Islamic Revolution when, after several decades, Iran’s economic, social and political discontent coalesced into an anti-Shah revolution. Prior to the establishment of the Islamic Republic the Pahlavi regime had worked to modernise Iran by introducing national economic policies implementing land reform, curtailing clerical power over law, education and religious endowments. The first Pahlavi Shah, Reza ‘Khan’ Pahlavi (1925-1941), ‘created a national civil service and police force, quickened the pace of economic development, fuelled by oil revenues, engendered a rising class of commercial and industrial bourgeoisie, and enlarged the size of the modern middle class’ (Hiro, 2005: 91). This rapid modernisation and westernisation of the upper and new-middle classes was to be the beginning of the split in Iran’s cultural heritage.

In 1941, during the Second World War, the British and Soviet troops invaded Iran because of Reza Shah’s sympathies for the German offensive. In fear for his life he abdicated the throne in favour of his son Muhammad Reza Pahlavi (1941-1979) to continue a ‘royal dictatorship’ unpopular with the Iranian people (Hiro, 2005: 94; Keddie, 2003: 105). The aftermath of the war and the actions of the new Shah, who at only 21 was still too vulnerable to rule a war-torn country, ‘lit the fuse of the revolution’ (Mackey, 1996: 278). After Mosaddeq’s8 nationalisation of Iranian oil resources Muhammad Reza Shah lived lavishly, spending the oil revenue’s millions on himself, rather than the economy or Iranian people. This new oil wealth increased the gap between Iran’s upper and new-middle classes and the powerful, conservative bazaaris9, who continued to follow clerical rule associating ‘the way things should be more with Islam

8 Dr Mosaddeq was later expelled from his role as Iran’s Prime Minister and placed under house arrest following a British and American backed CIA coup in 1953 with the support of Muhammad Reza Shah (Basmenji, 2005: 110-118). 9 Lower-class market traders and merchants that control a large portion of Iran’s commerce.

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than with west’ (Keddie, 1981 in Hiro, 2005: 95). As a result the Shah became increasingly disliked amongst both secular nationalists and the anti-Shah clergy.

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, leader of the Islamic Revolution – ‘Iran’s third popular uprising against absolute monarchy and foreign intervention’ (Mackey, 1996: 272) – had actively denounced the Shah’s governance since 1944 (Keddie, 2003: 147). These activities saw Khomeini imprisoned on a number of occasions and eventually exiled to Turkey in 1964, then Iraq and finally France. He spent the following fourteen years circulating his views and speeches on a Holy War against the regime on audio cassettes10, culminating in his return on February 1st 1979 to found the Islamic Republic of Iran, ‘committed to the preservation of traditional Shia culture, governed by a new elite composed of the Shia clergy, and ultimately ruled by a Shia authority figure – Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’ (Mackay, 1996: 272).

Unlike other countries in the Middle East such as Saudi Arabia, Iran is well equipped with a democratic framework holding presidential elections, passing laws through a parliamentary system (the Majlis) and forming governments with some power concentrated in the legislature (Hiro, 2005: 26-28). Nevertheless, real power is held outside the Iranian constitution, residing not with the elected President or Parliament but instead the Supreme Leader and his appointed judiciary and Guardian Counsel [sic] (Brazier, 2007: 4 and Alavi, 2005: 7). This has led some critics to describe Iran as ‘a strange hybrid of democratic thinking and intolerance’ (Mostyn, 2002: 26). Candidates for the, largely ceremonial, Presidency require screening by the conservative hard-line Guardian Counsel prior to their campaign and so reformist nominees often fail to get their names on the ballot papers (Brazier, 2007: 5). This political leadership is reflective of the ‘managed democracy’ described by Kulikova and Perlmutter (2007: 34) in their paper on Kyrgyzstan. For them a managed democracy is:

10 For Mostyn (2002: 32) it was ‘through the sale of these underground tapes that the revolution was to take root’ because in creating ‘an image of tranquillity and harmony’ the people were becoming ‘disillusioned’ with state-controlled media subsequently adopting ‘media of the underground’.

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…A regime with formal democratic institutions such as regular contested elections and other forms of popular participation like referenda, diverse and private press and developed civil liberties such as freedom to travel. At the same time, this type of regime is authoritarian in essence as it allows limited autonomy for democratic institutions.

The revolution had ‘began as a pro-democracy movement’ to overthrow the Shah’s repressive regime yet two years on ‘Iran was a theocracy governed by severe Islamic law, with Ayatollah Khomeini established as a supreme leader and ‘God’s Representative on Earth’ (Alavi, 2005: 44).

The aftermath of the revolution led to numerous reforms imposing a strict authoritative rule by a government that many Iranians feel was no better than its predecessor. Those of the more visually prevalent were compulsory Islamic dress, the refusal to issue birth certificates to children given ancient Persian names, a return to Sharia Law11, the repeal of the Family Protection Law12 (1967) and the renaming of streets and monuments (Shah Street to Islamic Republic Street, Takht-e Jamshid [Persepolis13] to Taleqani and Shahyad Tower to Azadi [Freedom] Monument) (Alavi, 2005; Basmenji, 2005 and Hiro, 2005).

The image of today’s Iran is one of blended cultural histories where ancient Persian and Zoroastrian iconographies clash with the chador14, an institutionalised symbol of oppression, and ‘Death to America’ chants following Friday’s mass prayer. The remnants of a pre-Islamic state can be found across Iran, from Persepolis to the Shah’s Sadabad museum complex and the tombs of Darius I, Darius II, Xerxes and Artaxerxes to Iran’s

11 Sharia Law refers to the sacred laws of Islam and is understood as a system of criminal justice and religious code for living. For women it means their worth equates to exactly half that of a man’s. 12 A law, which had risen the marriage age for girls to eighteen (from thirteen), gave women the right to apply for divorce without the husband’s permission, restricted polygamy and transferred family affairs from Sharia courts to secular courts (Hiro, 2005: 332-333). 13 The ruins of Iran’s ancient Achaemenid Empire in Shiraz. 14 See appendix 7.1 - female Islamic dress consisting of a semi-circle of black fabric worn from head to toe to protect the wearer’s modesty.

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national airline, Iran Air, whose symbol features the pagan image of Homa (the guardian of travellers found at the ruins of Persepolis). Iran’s New Year celebrations around March 21st also hark back to the ancient Achaemenian period ‘when kings marked the return of spring each year with great festivals held at Persepolis’ (Loveday et al, 2005: 374). Ironically Norooz (the Iranian New Year) rather than Eid (marking the end of Islam’s month of fast, Ramadan/Ramazan) is Iran’s biggest national holiday.

3.1.2 A Veiled Society

As a traveller in Iran the most noticeable difference between cultures in the west and the Islamic Republic is the segregation of public and private spaces. Goffman (in Amir- Ebrahimi, 2004) argues ‘that in every society individuals consciously play roles and wear social masks in public spaces’. These masks tend to take the shape of two contrasting behaviours – real and honest in opposition to false and contrived – where ‘real’ behaviours represent the true self and ‘fake’ behaviours represent a social performance.

In discussing the institutionalisation of social performances Amir-Ebrahimi (2004) emphasises Goffman’s metaphor by claiming, ‘in societies like Iran (…) public spaces are regulated by the state and tradition’, which means that ‘real and honest performances are more difficult to realise, especially for women and youth’. Individuals hide behind ‘predetermined social roles based on Islamic and traditional values’ affecting not only their appearance but also their body language and speech.

Since the revolution Iranians have had to learn how to adapt their personalities to ‘perform’ within the moral guidelines set out by the Islamic Republic. In Basmenji (2005: 195) Nima, a teenager during the time of the revolution said ‘that the major social feature of the 1980s was that people learned to be two-faced and lead double lives’. Alcohol, dancing, pop music, dating, homosexuality, adultery, apostasy/atheism, promoting values contrary to Islam, and sex out of wedlock are all prohibited in Iran. It is illegal for unrelated men and women to socialise with each other and such immorality is severely

Alexis Rigby: 060111799 31 Looking for Freedom: An Exploration of the Iranian Blogosphere punishable by law (Alexanian, 2006: 138). However that does not mean these activities are not happening in the private spaces of Iranian society.

Increasingly Iranian youth are turning to the Internet to ‘rediscover the self’, ‘meet, mate and cheat’ and celebrate ‘public intimacy’ through weblogs (Amir-Ebrahimi, 2004; Mahdavi, 2007 and Alexanian, 2006). Yet with a cultural history of self-censorship and conservatism Derakhshan (in Alexanian, 2006: 136) argues more broadly that ‘the open space of the Internet stands in contrast to not only political censorship but also social norms more generally’. Double consciousnesses, multiple personalities and compound relationships are embodied in the practices, meanings and subjectivities of Iranian culture and to successfully negotiate the space between public and private spaces it is fundamental to recognise such social differences (Alexanian, 2006: 136-137).

Ta’arof is a prime example of this public performance in social interactions embedded in Iranian culture. It is a system of courtesy that is far more complex than is apparent to an unpractised foreigner with deeper meanings that extend to social hierarchy, position and class. Essentially ta’arof is the term given to a ritual display of politeness in which an offer of food or a refusal of money for a service is made or consideration of physical actions are given, such as sitting with your back towards an elder or holding the door open for another (Burke, Elliott and Mohammadi, 2004: 40). As a general rule Mohammadi (ibid) advises ‘to always refuse any offer three times but, if they continue to insist, do accept’.

The co-existence of the Islamic Republic, Persian heritage and modernisation is especially trying for Iran’s youth, who now account for seventy percent of Iran’s total population. While the Islamic Republic is credited for improvements made in education, national literacy levels and increasing female university entrants it is also condemned as outmoded and consequently ‘run its course’ (Alavi, 2005: 266). Those who lived through the Islamic Revolution are now in the minority and the younger generation is calling for a government that reflects a change in requirements, attitudes and values (Alavi, 2005: 10- 11, 139; Basmenji, 2005: 29-33 and Hiro, 2005: 317-318).

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3.1.3 Education and National ‘Brain Drain’

The Islamic Republic has, to a certain extent, been successful in improving the lives of Iranian youth by reforming policies on education and increasing national literacy rates. Free education, for all, not only dramatically improved the level of educational attainments for both men and women but it also increased literacy levels by thirty-five percent in twenty years; ‘the literacy rate of the adolescent population jumped from merely sixty percent in 1976 to over ninety-five percent in 1996’ (Basmenji, 2005: 37). Unsurprisingly this rate was greatest amongst women and the rural communities, who prior to the reforms significantly lacked educational opportunities (Alavi, 2005: 10 and Keddie, 2003: 285). As literacy levels were approaching universality female university admissions were also on the rise and in 2003 reached an estimated sixty-six percent (Keddie, 2003: 286 and Hiro, 2005: 314).

A central ideal of Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution was ‘self-sufficiency’ in which he envisioned Iran as an independent nation ruled by religion, free from foreign dominance and dependence15. In providing free education to the masses Khomeini sought to separate Iran from foreign and imperialist dependency by ‘strengthening the spirit of inquiry, investigation and initiative in all areas of science, technology, and culture, as well as Islamic studies’ (Algar, 1980: 28). Article 13 of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s constitution declares that ‘the government must provide all citizens with free education to the end of middle school, and must expand higher education to the level required by the country of self-sufficiency’ (ibid: 39).

However, due to the control the clerical government holds over education there is wide dissatisfaction with the enforcement of strict social codes (mandatory Islamic dress, gender segregation and subject options), religious limits on curricula and privatisation of state-run universities (Keddie, 2003: 286; Malm and Esmailian, 2007: 104).

15 A notion now immortalised in one of Tehran’s popular souvenir shops, Fair and Shop for Products of Self-Sufficiency Plan of Imam Khomeini’s Relief Committee.

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Ironically, while the government is making successes with the rise of national literacy rates and increased numbers of female university graduates they continue to ‘support laws and practices that institutionalise male supremacy, controls on the lives of women and young people, and continued economic crisis and hardship has made the positive changes (…) only part of a less impressive total picture’ (ibid: 290). Iran’s free education and high unemployment resulting in a national ‘brain drain16’ is often cited as another of Iran’s greatest paradoxes as more and more young graduates seek employment abroad due to a US-led embargo and stagnant economy failing to provide opportunities to these recently graduated Iranians (Alavi, 2005: 138; Basmenji, 2005: 45-48 and Keddie, 2003: 290-291).

In addition, the less well off are gradually being ‘squeezed out’ of further education due to the competitiveness of the ‘concour’, an extensive entrance exam Iranians must pass to gain university admittance (Hiro, 2005:315). Roza (in Malm and Esmailian, 2007: 104) claims that by paying for ‘private lessons specifically designed to the concour’ the middle classes are in essence buying their university admissions.

According to Basmenji (2005: 45-46) in 2003 Iran’s ‘official unemployment rate was put at about thirteen percent (…) but economists estimate the real figure is more than twenty percent’. Those most effected are Iran’s well-educated women and youth. With an estimate of one hundred and fifty thousand educated Iranians leaving annually in search of better lives abroad the costs of brain drain are high; ‘local sources put the economic loss at some fifty billion dollars a year or higher’ (Esfandiari, 2004).

Not only is this national brain drain costing Iran economically it is also escalating the politicisation of Iran’s youth, who at sixteen are entitled to vote. Iran’s youth, especially the Tahkim Vahdat – Iran’s National Union of Students, set up by the government to ‘drive out liberal and left-wing student groups’ – have become ‘the most outspoken

16 Highly skilled workers migrating to search for better opportunities abroad, resulting in a loss of educational investment for the country students trained in (see Carrington and Detragiache, 1998).

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critics of the regime’ (Alavi, 2005: 137). The mass student protests of 1999 were a result of the escalated unrest brought about by pre-emptive censorship on reformist media. In tightening the 1986 Press Law17 the Majlis caused outrage by requiring newspaper publishers to submit details of their employees and their journalistic sources. Peaceful student protests immediately followed demanding political and social liberalisation but after dormitories were attacked by vigilantes mass violence broke out, leaving hundreds dead and many more imprisoned (Basmenji, 2005: 250; Hiro, 2005: 314-319). Another example of the paradox that ‘life in Iran’ is subjected to the contradiction ‘that the Islamic regime places such value on education for all, while at the same time prohibits free speech’ (Alavi, 2005: 138).

3.1.4 Conclusion

In outlining these three main paradoxes the literature emphasises the complexities of interpreting Iranian phenomena in isolation. With a long history of separation between the public and private spheres, self-censoring social norms, multiple-realities and conflicting identities, interpretations of Iranian culture, it is argued, are represented by the metaphor of ‘touching an elephant in the dark18’. Basmenji (2005: 12-13) asserts that ‘as observers in general, and journalists in particular, we have a tendency to reduce sophisticated, multi-dimensional phenomena to understanding clichés’. In touching an elephant in the dark, ‘each of us gives an account of the situation and events that can only represent one point of view – just one of the myriad manifestations of the big picture’ (ibid). In viewing Iranian culture from a single vantage point, Basmenji (ibid: 18) suggests that interpretations can be misleading as the reality of phenomena may be

17 Legislation detailing the right to freedom of expression for print media. It states ‘publications and news media shall enjoy freedom of expression provided what they publish does not violate Islamic principles or the civil code’ (Algar, 1980: 37). 18 A Hindustani fable described by the thirteenth-century Persian poet Rumi to illustrate how a whole consists of different parts. In taking hold of a different part of the elephant in a darkened room each of the men mistook that part for the whole. Naturally these men came to different, somewhat contradictory conclusions convincing themselves that the elephant was like a waterspout (trunk), fan (ear), pillar (leg), rope (tail) and throne (back).

Alexis Rigby: 060111799 35 Looking for Freedom: An Exploration of the Iranian Blogosphere viewed differently depending upon the diversities of individual perspectives, which fail to perceive the relationships between the parts that create the whole.

3.2 The Internet Predicament

3.2.1 A Platform of Communication

Internet access in Iran has ‘one of the fastest growth rates in the world’, with estimated users rising by fourteen million in just three years (Rahimi 2003: 1). Initially the Iranian government welcomed Internet expansion, viewing it as a platform ‘to provide an alternative means of scientific and technological advancement during the troubled economic period that followed the Iran-Iraq war’ (ibid: 1-2). Unlike China where ‘intra- government communication networks’ were largely being developed and controlled by the state to ‘streamline government processes’, Iran’s government encouraged Internet users within the commercial and educational sectors to develop networks without state interference (Kalathil and Boas, 2003: 21 and Rahimi, 2003: 2). Even today despite increasing competition from independent telecommunication service providers Iranian Internet advancements predominately emerge from within the education sector’s domestic network connection IRANET.IPM.

The rapid growth of the Internet amongst the general public is largely credited to the expansion of commercial Internet service providers (ISPs), private technology and widespread curiosity. In disagreeing with the government over how to improve the quality and availability of network access commercial ISPs in the telecommunications industry broke down government control on Internet development and improved the quality of provisions for commercial services in the private sector. With less control over the direction of Internet expansion and diffusion of public Internet access suspicions and caution over public exposures to influences outside Iran have replaced the government’s initial enthusiasm for introducing the Internet as a discussion board to ‘exchange

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scientific ideas within the inter-university system (Rahimi, 2003: 2 and Houissa, 2000: 56).

The Internet, as an open information and communication platform with few restrictions or an official governing body to regulate its contents is a driver of political change that challenges the centralised control outlined by the Iranian authorities. The government is increasingly concerned with the impact that web-content critical of the Islamic Republic has on the struggle between the Islamic Republic and its reformist critics. For Houissa (2000: 56) the roots of such antagonism ‘stems from the perception that since the Internet is completely open and largely unregulated, it consequently has the potential of being subversive’. Like Rahimi (2003: 3) he emphasises the role of the Internet as a powerful means of expression that supplements political interaction and contests state control.

In enabling users to interact with members of the opposite sex, receive and share news out of sight from the authorities, experience globalised cultures and express political opinions freely and anonymously Internet access has created a new virtual space for political dissent. For Alavi (2005: 16) the Internet ‘defies control and suspension of speech by authoritarian rule seeking to undermine resistance’ and thus provides political dissidents with a creative medium to challenge state authority. Amir-Ebrahimi (2004) claims that ‘in Iran, where the public sphere is closely monitored and regulated by traditional and state forces, the Internet has become a means to resist the restrictions imposed on these spaces’. It is a modernising and liberalising force adopted by Iran’s young educated population, in search of new ways to interact with the larger community, participate in the social world and express viewpoints contradictory of the state (Rahimi, 2003: 3).

Since 2000-2001 the Iranian authorities have closed down more than one hundred print- newspapers flouting the 1986 Press Law19, an unintended consequence of which is a greater reliance on the Internet as an unrestricted means of communication for Iranian journalists. In offering unrestricted access to information ‘public Internet access

19 See footnote 17.

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expose[s] large swathes of a population to forbidden information and images’ galvanising grassroots opposition in propagating calls for more freedoms and reforms in the country (Basmenji, 2005: 43). Virtual space has enabled Iranians to pursue politics and comment anonymously, oppose moral guidelines and develop relationships that in real public spaces are prohibited and severely punished. As a result the authorities have enacted tough policies to curb online activity by monitoring service providers, limiting connection speeds and filtering content.

3.2.2 Access, Control and Regulation

According to Rahimi (2003: 4) ‘for most of its short history in Iran, the internet has been free of control and regulation’ and its expansion encouraged, in contrast to other Middle Eastern states such as the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. However, since 2003 with increasing restrictions and control enforced on other new technologies, especially satellite television, the authorities have introduced systematic strategies to filter web content, block immoral websites and limit connection speeds (Basmenji, 2005: 52-54; Rahimi, 2003: 7; Granick, 2005: 1; Houissa, 2000: 59-60 and OpenNet Initiative, 2006: 10-13). Their reluctance to control Internet access prior to 2003 was not only due to technical reasons (not having the know-how to enforce restrictions) but also to ideological reasons such as the perceived economic and technological benefit, e-government and the exportation of Islamic values. Yet the use of the Internet to organise and mobilise support for protests (Malm and Esmailian, 2007: 83) and advocate democracy has caused the conservative authorities to view the Internet as a political threat and led major crackdowns targeting access to immoral, political and religious websites.

In their attempts to restrict Internet activity and control communication the government have enforced limits on access points, blacklisted websites and introduced keyword- filtering software (Pradhan, 2007: 1). By targeting reformist, pornographic, political and religious content Reporters without Borders (2006) suggest there is an estimated ten million websites blocked by the Islamic authorities in Iran. These sites include Flickr,

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Amazon, Youtube, the New York Times, Facebook and the Persian translation of the BBC. In Iran such methods of censorship have been justified as acts to protect the population and uphold the moral values of Islam, safeguarding Iranian culture from corruptive western influences. For Reichman (in Jensen, M., 2004: 13) ‘the removal, suppression, or restricted circulation of literary, artistic, or educational materials – of images, ideas, and information – on the grounds that these are morally or otherwise objectionable’ is the preferred method of censorship in the Middle East. In denying the Iranian people the freedom to choose, their choice of freedom is destroyed (Houissa, 2000: 59 and Jensen, M., 2004: 13).

Ironically the system used to filter keywords on Iran’s Internet was developed in the United States by a commercial software developing company called Secure Computing. The filtering software blocks both internationally hosted sites in English and sites in local languages that feature prohibited keywords, but there is a frustrating tendency of this software to over-block or block in error (OpenNet Initiative, 2006). ISPs have also been ordered to remove anti-government and un-Islamic sites hosted on their servers and monitor user activities. Internet users ‘must promise, among other things, that they will not contact parties and sites deemed offensive to Islamic moral values’ which includes pornography, information on women’s rights, homosexuality, alternative news sources, satire and material that undermines the Islamic Republic (Houissa, 2000: 60 and OpenNet Initiative, 2006).

Self-expression on the Internet carries a heavy price as numerous ‘cyber-dissidents’ have been arrested and charged with acting against Iran’s national security, inciting rebellion, propaganda against the Islamic Republic and insulting leading figures in Iran’s regime20. During 2003 the Iranian government became the first to ‘take direct action against bloggers’ by arresting Sina Motallebi for the reformist contents of his popular weblog, http://www.rooznegar.com (Alavi, 2005: 2-4; BBC, 2003). Through well-publicised

20 See http://persianimpediment.org/mfx.html for an extensive list of bloggers and journalists ‘gagged online’ (a blogger or online journalist who is silenced, repressed and suppressed) or refer to appendix 7.4.

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accounts of the crackdowns on Internet users ‘considered politically or socially inappropriate’ the authorities have encouraged self-censorship and instilled fear of arrest into the minds of public users, in an attempt to control online activity (Kalathil and Boas, 2003: 103). Although there has been a steady decline in the rate of detentions for cyber- dissidence since a peak in late 2004 Internet filtering has intensified with growing evidence discussed in reports on filtering activity from mainstream media and academic research (Tait, 2006b; BBC, 2007a; Reuters, 2007; Biever, 2007 and Deibert et al, 2007).

Other factors playing a significant role in hampering Internet activity are the restrictions on connection speeds for residential and Internet café users and excessive ISP charges. Limited speeds of up to 128 Kbps (compared to average UK broadband speeds of 2.6 Mbps – BBC, 2007b) pose serious limitations on the volume of data transmission and format of information exchange. Tait (2006a) argues that this ‘move by Iran’s telecommunication regulator will make it more difficult to download foreign music, film and television programmes, which the authorities blame for undermining Islamic culture among the younger generation’.

For Jensen, P. (2006: 14), ‘even though the information available on the Internet cannot be controlled, the points of access to it can, to some extent, as can the individuals who use it be intimidated and discourage from seeking it out’. Consequently Internet censorship refers not only to the direct control of web-content but also imprisoning bloggers, deleting sites and the control of points of access. Yet despite such active control residential connectivity is on the rise in Iran (Houissa, 2003: 58 and Rahimi, 2003: 1). Users are increasingly tuned into government regulations on the Internet and are creating new paths around it.

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3.2.3 Uncensoring the Censored

Hogge (2007: 1) argues that with rising Internet censorship throughout the world, including China, Iran, Ethiopia, Burma, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and the UAE, the Internet is ‘starting to look more like a tool of control, not one of freedom’. As a result Gilmore’s (in Barlow, 1996 and Hogge, 2007: 1) claim that ‘the Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it’ seems unlikely, but rather users themselves find ways to undermine censorship to cope with regulatory crackdowns.

The more successful methods used on restricted networks to access prohibited content include the use of proxy servers that hide user locations and protect privacy such as Anonymizer and Surfola, web by email (in which users request details of a webpage or circulate news via email), direct connections with IP addresses (such as http://192.168.0.15 instead of http://www.example.com) and mirrored sites from unrestricted domains (Human Rights Watch, 1999: 27; Persian Journal, 2005 and Hogge, 2007:1). Proxy servers and mirrored sites bypass ISP restrictions by accessing material via services outside regulatory zones. Users can dial Internet service providers in other countries or rely on sponsors and friends to ‘change its address or mirror the same content at other World Wide Web sites’ (Human Rights Watch, 1999: 27).

Although government censorship activities are imperfect and require little skill to get around authorities are becoming increasingly aware of alternative methods to access content. Iran now blocks Anonymizer’s official site in a continuation of the censorship ‘cat-and-mouse game’, yet as more sites become filtered more sites emerge to counter those filters (Khalathil and Boas, 2003: 109 and Deters, 2007: 1).

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3.2.4 Conclusion

As the Internet grows throughout the region integrating global communities, modernising developments and ‘democratising closed regimes’, ‘it will likely grow in political significance, and the liberalising tendencies of certain types of Internet use will become increasingly influential factors in national politics’ (Kalanthil and Boas, 2003: 128). Greater contact with the outside world encourages Iran’s youthful population to explore influences which extend further than the Islamic Republic resulting in a virtual community that meets information needs no longer met by print media, due to the strict enforcement of the Press Law. In theory the Internet ‘provides a safe space in which people write freely on a wide variety of topics, from the most serious and urgent to the most frivolous’ but by imprisoning journalists and bloggers alike, filtering web-content and encouraging self-censorship the authorities, in practice, are gaining greater controls in suppressing free speech (Alavi, 2005: 1-5).

While it is possible to gain access outside the control of state authorities slow connection speeds make it impractical to receive such content and the more that people try to counter censorship the more the government works to counter anti-censorship. Similar to the Kyrgyz government the Iranian authorities understand ‘that Internet content cannot be restricted’ (Kulikova and Perlmutter, 2007: 37) and they can only exert influence on a very small part of it, so in order to control access they need to filter content, block data transmission and resort to intimidation and imprisonment.

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3.3 The Weblog Phenomenon

3.3.1 Definition and Common Characteristics

Generally weblogs tend to be defined by their distinctive format rather than their style or purpose. Blood (in Rodzvilla, 2002: ix) defines weblogs as ‘frequently updated webpages with dated entries, new ones placed on top’ and suggests that ‘just as email has made us all writers, weblogs have made all of us publishers’. Weblog services and tools such as Blogger21, Pitas and Wordpress22 have been developed to make creating and publishing a blog far easier than early examples found in the late 1990s and with the wide accessibility of this software blogging has more recently been hailed as ‘pushbutton publishing for the people’ (Nardi, Schiano and Gumbrecht, 2004: 222). According to Herring et al (2004: 2) the formation of weblogs represent technological changes emerging online that effectively form a ‘de facto bridge between multimedia HTML documents and text-based computer-mediated communication, thereby blurring the traditional distinction between these two dominant Internet paradigms’ and the boundaries between technical expertise and interactive browsing.

Typically a weblog is ‘created and maintained by a single individual, and their content tends to focus on the creator or his/her interests’ (Herring et al, 2004: 2). Comment facilities usually feature to allow readers the opportunity to respond to discussions and develop ideas. However with blogging becoming increasingly popular community weblogs, with multiple contributors, have emerged and feature quite prominently in the wider blogosphere23. Metafilter24 for example is a community weblog in which readers are encouraged to join and comment in discussions or contribute their own content. For Haughey (Metafilter’s founder) Metafilter exists to ‘break down the barriers between

21 http://www.blogger.com/ 22 http://wordpress.com/ 23 A collective term used to encompass all blogs/weblogs – the totality of the weblog community – coined by Brad Graham (1999, http://www.bradlands.com/weblog/comments/september_10_1999/). 24 http://www.metafilter.com/

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people, to extend a weblog beyond just one person, and to foster discussion among its members’ (http://www.metafilter.com/about.mefi). This socially interactive and community-like nature of weblogs essentially characterises their democratising and socially transformative potential to unite the space between public and private spheres (Herring et al, 2004: 3).

Although weblogs feature a number of common characteristics such as links (to online sources of information – other blogs, news, entertainment), comments, archives, badges (sponsors, campaigns, 3rd party advertising), calendars and dated entries in a reverse chronological order, they are diverse in style, purpose and genre. Bloggers tend to post short snippets of information with fewer images than regular webpages but there are increasing examples of photo-blogs, academic/knowledge blogs with longer articles and report-like entries and self-expressive journals that update others on their activities, offer opinions and release emotional tension (Herring et al, 2004: 1-3 and 5; Nardi, Schiano and Gumbrecht, 2004: 222-223; Blood in Rodzvilla, 2002: 8-10 and Herring et al, 2006: 2-4).

3.3.2 Style, Purpose and Genre

The popularity of weblogs according to Herring et al (2006: 1) has grown in the past several years, evolving from relative obscurity, ‘because they enable easy, inexpensive self-publication of content for a potentially vast audience on the World Wide Web, while being more flexible and interactive than previous publication formats, print or digital’. For blog readers they offer alternatives to mainstream news sources in response to current events. They pre-surf the web, link to points of interest and provoke thought, whereas for blog authors they offer a platform of self-expression to share opinions, release emotional frustration and record activities or interests. Primarily they create an environment of knowledge sharing, commentary and discussion for social activity and information exchange (Nardi, Schiano and Gumbrecht, 2004: 224-227; Herring et al, 2004: 1-2; Alavi, 2005: 16 and Amir-Ebrahimi, 2004: 3-4).

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Weblog styles have a tendency to fall into three categories outlined by Blood (2002: 5-6) – blogs (short-form journals), notebooks (sometimes personal, sometimes focused on the outside world) and filters (links to external information). Blogs or short-form journals classically refer to those created by individuals as vehicles of self-expression, notebooks refer to those used within organisations or institutions to share information and filters are those seen by journalists as alternative news sources and public opinion (Herring et al, 2004: 1). Yet more recently weblog styles have begun to merge and often fall into more than one category, have more than one purpose and cross genre classifications. Arguably while blogs create the audience the audience creates the blog through comments and discussions in their own blogs and so styles and habits also change, grow and develop over time (Nardi, Schiano and Gumbrecht, 2004: 224).

Prior to the release of free blogging software and major blogging platforms, weblogs commonly resembled filters, ‘providing a list of links with commentary and personal asides’ to reveal ‘glimpses of an unimaginable web to those who have no time to surf (…) pick[ing] out the interesting, the important, the overlooked and the unexpected’ (Blood, 2000 in Rodzvilla, 2002: 12). However with free software, improved networks, faster speeds and greater computer literacy more recent influxes of weblogs are better described as informal personal journals with authors that are ‘fully articulate’ in their opinions writing in ‘less reflexive and more reflective’ styles (ibid: 13-14).

By reading blogs categories tend to emerge naturally but determining an author’s motivation for blogging is more complex. Nardi, Schiano and Gumbrecht (2004: 222) attempt to examine blogs from the writer’s point of view through ethnographic interviews and discourse analysis to comment on why and how people create and use blogs. From their sample the results indicate that there are five object motivations of blogging: to update others on activities and whereabouts; express opinions to influence others; seek others’ opinions and feedback; think by writing and release emotional tension (ibid: 225). They conclude that ‘although it is too early to definitively conceptualise blogs, research indicates that they are a form of object-oriented communicative activity, enacting a wide

Alexis Rigby: 060111799 45 Looking for Freedom: An Exploration of the Iranian Blogosphere variety of social purposes’ (ibid: 230). Like bloggers more generally Iranian bloggers see weblogs as offering a space to join in with the wider community in discussing news, current events and culture. Effectively whilst blogs allow Iranians to express themselves more freely and anonymously they allow its readers to eavesdrop on clandestine conversations of closed societies that produce fresh perspectives on the lives of ordinary men and women (Alavi, 2005: 1, 7 and 16).

3.3.3 The Quiet Revolution – Iranian Blogging

The community of blogging in Iran has arguably arisen due to the youthful nature of Iranian society (Alavi, 2005: 16). Alavi (ibid) suggests that its popularity has grown more so in recent years because as sources of interactive communication blogs enable young people to bypass many of the strict social codes imposed upon them by the theocratic Islamic Republic. In using blogs to express reflective narration, negotiate power and ‘make public’ private lives ‘Iranian identities are increasingly being articulated’ as records of ‘personal experiences, thoughts, anecdotes, and opinions’ (Alexanian, 2006: 134). Blogging is an opportunity not only for Iranians to ‘rediscover themselves in virtual space’ but also for expatriates to reconnect to their homeland and non-Iranians to experience snapshots of the Iranian underground and develop landscapes of Iranian life (Amir- Ebrahimi, 2004: 3 and Petrossian, 2006). The lack of freedom Iranians have in ‘real’ spaces to form identities, explore globalised youth culture and discuss politics has ‘rendered virtual spaces an important site for new encounters, the formation of communities, finding friends and, finally, the possibility of redefining the self according to one’s own narrative/liking’ (Amir-Ebrahimi, 2004: 3).

Iran’s Internet experience over recent years has brought about a sexual and social revolution to accompany cyber-culture and urban discourse in challenging the Islamic regime. Internet usage in Iran for the young population provides an avenue to circumvent restrictions on social life in three major ways. Firstly the Internet has become a ‘place for cultural consumption and production prohibited by the government (including news,

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movies, music etc.)’; secondly it has created a ‘blogosphere or Weblogistan25 as a venue for exchanging information and creating a space for emerging youth sexual culture’; and thirdly it embodies ‘an unregulated means of meeting, mating and cheating with potential partners online’ (Mahdavi, 2007: 19).

The small freedoms that the anonymity of the Internet allows Iranians such as voicing opinions, asking questions and venting frustrations have big knock-on effects in the wider cultural make-up of urban Iran. Blogs are used not only to discuss prohibited subjects and engage with the social community but also to spread news (especially in times of crisis e.g. student protests and the aftermath of the earthquake in Bam during 2003), circulate campaigns and petition against the state to reflect deep antipathy (Alavi, 2005: 247). The political factor of blogging is mostly evident in the example given by Kulikova and Perlmutter (2007: 32) in which they describe the power of blogging ‘call[ing] attention to political repression’ as ‘one arrested Iranian blogger was released, in part due to a blog- driven protest campaign and petition’.

Blogs give Iranians, with their strong historic awareness of revolution, war and dissent the opportunity to disapprove ‘of a religious system that governs every aspect of their lives’ and actively participate against the rule of censorship by defying the control and supervisions of authorities (Alavi, 2005: 36 and 226). They also allow people to discuss ‘corrupt music, cinema and literature from the west’ and although ‘it may seem bizarre to an outsider that Iranian bloggers tirelessly post long and detailed descriptions of films and laboriously type out by hand numerous banned books’, for an Iranian it’s a step towards undermining the Islamic Republic’s censorship (Alavi, 2005: 91 and 223).

25 The Persian equivalent term for blogosphere – It is used to refer to the collectivity of weblogs on the Internet but often connotes specifically the Persian-language blogging community (Doostdar, 2004: 660).

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For Doostdar (2004: 653) however such ‘uncritical technicist assumptions about the revolutionary impact of blogs on Iranian society’ have led to ‘numerous claims about the ways weblogs are rupturing Iran’s social, cultural, and political fabric by promoting such previously nonexistent things as freedom of expression and unfettered relationships between young men and women’. These conclusions made by previous researchers, she suggests, are ‘overly and naively enthusiastic’ claims of the ‘social changes that are (or are wished to be) coming about as a consequence of the adoption of a new communication medium by a small percentage of Iranians’ that miss the ‘complex patterns of adaptation, appropriation, and emergence that characterise the online sociocultural practices of bloggers’. The percentage of Iranians active online is minute when compared to the entire population and of that small percentage there is a greater number of well-educated members of the new-middle to upper classes which in effect widens the gap in access to cultural capital between the Iranian lower and new-middle classes (Halevi, 2006: 18 and Doostdar, 2004: 658).

3.3.4 Conclusion

As bridges between globalised communities and restricted worlds, blogs allow people to explore relationships, engage in cultural consumption, exchange information and develop personal identities in virtual public spaces. As social texts they are representative of both language and social constructions, engaging with real life contexts that are not dissimilar to spoken communication (Doostdar, 2004: 654). However, because the Internet permits anonymity for its users it allows them to further explore the depths of Iranian culture and society that are forbidden to them in real social space, both literally and metaphorically (through the practice of self-censorship and reading between the lines).

Nevertheless the impact that the Internet has upon Iranian culture is difficult to measure, as Internet penetration is not as wide spread or as well developed as it is in other parts of the world. The Iranian blogging community is typically characterised as a minority of well-educated urban youth with modern aspirations and therefore not representative of

Alexis Rigby: 060111799 48 Looking for Freedom: An Exploration of the Iranian Blogosphere wider Iranian culture (Alavi, 2005; Halevi, 2006 and Jensen, P., 2004). What Iranian blogs do offer is a ‘unique glimpse of the changing consciousness of Iran’s younger generation’ and their struggles to directly express frustrations with living in a post- revolution Islamic Republic whose strict guidelines have essentially been outgrown (Alavi, 2005: 361).

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4. Findings and Discussion

This chapter presents the results of the investigation and discusses its findings in relation to the literature review in Chapter 3. It draws on previous research focusing on blogs in general and Iranian blogging in particular to interpret blogger characteristics and Internet usage, their motivations for writing and the subjects they write about, the impact that active filtering has had on patterns of blogging and the evasive linguistics strategies bloggers use to self-censor their blogging practice.

4.1 Quantitative Survey Results

As with previous studies on weblogs such as Herring et al (2004), Golkar (2005), Halevi (2006) and Alavi (2005) a large proportion of this investigation’s respondents were well- educated young adult males. Overall 88% of survey participants listed themselves as male, between the ages of 16-35 with educational attainments post high-school/college. 41% listed their highest educational qualifications as university Bachelor degrees whilst 11% and a further 7% indicated attainments of post-graduate status with Masters degrees and PhD/Doctorates respectively.

Arguably, not only do these findings support earlier research on weblog phenomena claiming that the overwhelming majority of blog authors are young males but also they further illustrate the youthfulness of the Iranian population and their high levels of literacy and educational attainments. However with 56% of those respondents residing outside of Iran at the time of participation it is unclear whether these high levels of educational qualification are a direct result of the reforms in education post-Revolution. It is also unclear how national ‘brain drain’ statistics outlined in Chapter 3 compares with these survey responses as only 9% were listed as unemployed. Generally the respondents described themselves as students or self-employed.

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Blog Author Characteristics (Questions 1-6)

Characteristic Frequency Percentage

Adult (16-35) 40 88% Male 36 80% Resident in Iran 20 44% Iranian nationality (inc. dual) 42 93% Student 17 40% Self-employed 12 28% Higher education (bachelor/masters degrees) 29 67%

Similarly in support of Halevi’s (2006: 16) findings on ‘computer literacy and frequency of access’ a majority of this survey respondents access the Internet more than once a day. However, surprisingly the number of years those respondents have maintained a weblog was much more evenly split.

Internet Usage (Questions 7-11)

Characteristic Frequency Percentage

More than 5 years of Internet experience 35 81% Access Internet more than once a day 41 95% Internet accessed predominately from home 41 95% Number of years maintaining a weblog (equal split 10 29% between 0-6 mths and 3-4 years) Owner of one/two weblogs 29 81%

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4.2 Qualitative Survey Results

With fewer responses for the open-ended questions frequencies are displayed in unit numbers rather than percentages, which could potentially mislead.

Questions 12 and 13 of this online survey asked participants to list reasons why they started to blog and why they continue. All the responses have been coded and are listed in the table below to illustrate the spread of motivations. Other motivations for starting to blog included ‘for fun/entertainment’, interests in new technology, making friends and learning about the world. Other motivations of survey respondents continuing to blog included for fun, to meet new people, out of habit and addiction.

Motivations as described by Nardi, Schiano and Gumbrecht (2004: 225)

Motivations Frequency

Update others on activities and whereabouts 3 Express opinions to influence others 10 Seek others’ opinions and feedback 5 ‘Think by writing’ 5 Release emotional tension 7

Responses to Question 14 concerning target audiences were of less interest, as generally participants did not elaborate further than ‘every body’, ‘every people’, and ‘all Persians’ or ‘young adults’. However one respondent did claim to target his blog at ‘anyone who does no [sic] speak or read Farsi but would like to know the other side of the coin, other that [sic] what is reflected in main stream media [and] anyone who is curious about Iranian society and what it really is like to live and function in Iran’. This suggests that blogs are increasingly important in providing readers with alternative news sources and writers with a platform to self-expression as it highlights that some bloggers at least aim to influence their readers.

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This table below highlights the topics listed by survey respondents to describe the contents of their blogs. Where answers included more than one topic an entry was made for each response. Unsurprisingly the more common weblog topics were found to be politics, society and culture whereas the least common was religion (discussed later in Question 18).

Weblog subjects (Question 15)

Topics Frequency

Politics 6 Society and culture 8 Life 4 Relationships 1 Science and philosophy 4 Technology 2 Iran 5 Art 1 Sport 2 Religion 1

When asked about the types of other blogs they read (Question 16) respondents generally answered blogs similar to their own. For example one respondent said he writes about ‘technology (web and IT)’ and when asked if he reads other blogs he responded with ‘IT blogs, to be updated and blog about’. This suggests that bloggers often read other blogs for inspiration about content for their own blogs. Others commented that they read blogs written by their friends to keep informed of their whereabouts and activities.

The purpose of Question 17 was to generate data to compare Iranian weblogs written in English with those written in Persian. The aim was to gather the over-arching themes of Persian language weblogs due to the infeasibility of having long transcripts translated. Although exactly half of the respondents provided answers only five of those provided detailed answers. It was suggested that by writing in English some Iranians use weblogs to practice their language skills. While some appreciated feedback from their readers

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highlighting their grammatical or spelling mistakes others suggested such mistakes explained their small audiences. Of the more interesting responses participants described differences reflective of their prospective audiences, i.e. blogs in Persian concentrated more on Iranian audiences providing news and discussion concerning ‘our rights and human rights abuses’. One respondent emphasised avoiding ‘critic[isms of] the Islamic regime, as it is not a good time for me to go to the jail’. For those who wrote in English as well as Persian they described their English blogs as attempts to ‘show more realistic view[s] of the country’.

In asking respondents to provide details regarding what subjects, if any, they avoid blogging about it was surprising that so many participants answered politics, especially because politics was also the most common subject of respondents’ weblogs. This suggests that whilst respondents discussed some aspects of politics others were heavily avoided. For instance in talking about their relationships with the opposite sex bloggers essentially create political discourse as such activity is prohibited by the state whereas more direct political discourse such as explorations of the government and its hierarchy is generally evaded.

Of the twenty responses eight respondents claimed to avoid the topic of politics for fear of ‘prison’, ‘trouble’ and compromising their ‘safety’. Religion is another interesting subject bloggers tend to avoid, even though there were only three respondents claiming to do so, because of causing offence or getting arrested. Whilst one respondent suggested ‘if I write about religion (Islam), may is I come to prison’ another was more concerned with disputing the concept of religion amongst its followers as ‘one cannot debate with the mind of a believer’.

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Subjects avoided (Question 18)

Topics Frequency

Politics 8 News 1 Sexual/relationships/porn 5 Personal matters 5 Religion 3 Censorship 2

In order to gain background information on censorship activity respondents were asked whether they had ever been asked to remove contents of their weblogs or experienced difficulties in accessing other weblogs (Questions 19 and 20). Six respondents claimed to have been asked to remove specific contents of their weblogs but in general these requests had been made by friends and family members concerned with content written about them specifically. Nevertheless one response worthy of note claimed

…Yeah my blog once been banned in all over the country for more than 6 months I contact the filtering department via email and I’ve been told about the one single blog post that I write somehow about passing filtering to reach I think BBC Persian I remove that post and they remove me form blacklist since then I never write about that things.

Overall for those who had experienced difficulties in accessing other blogs active filtering was the most frequently blamed. Sixteen out of the twenty-two responses commented on government filtering policies and the imprisonment of bloggers as a reason for the difficulties they had experienced. Others suggested technical reasons such as exceeded bandwidths and server maintenance.

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Questions 21 and 22 were of a more personal nature in that they questioned bloggers about the publication of their personal details and whether they had experienced threatening or abusive behaviour as a result of the contents found in their blogs. Nine of the eleven respondents living in Iran said that they do blog under their real names with contact details visible, while six of the ten Iranian respondents living abroad said no. A possible reason for the anonymity of Iranians in the diaspora may be a result of the nature of their weblogs. Earlier one respondent claimed to avoid blogging about personal matters and ‘some political views’ because of wanting to travel ‘back to Iran freely’. Another respondent suggested that anyone with strong links to Iran should consider the consequences of taking political sides. It may also be suggested that Iranians living in Iran have developed better methods of coping with censorship other than anonymity, as the majority of Iranians in Iran in this survey claimed to blog about subjects with politicised viewpoints.

In providing users with a platform of debate and site to express conflicting interests abusive and anonymous comments are a common form of attack on the Internet and blogs in particular26. Several of the investigation’s respondents reported that they’d experienced abusive comments as a result of blogging about controversial topics. However one respondent wrote of an incident in which the blog hosting service Blogfa had threatened to remove their blog should they ‘continue blogging in this way’. No further elaboration on the subject of the post was included.

Essentially Question 23 was a follow on from Question 22 asking had respondents ever closed down a blog and why. Participants answered with an overwhelming no but there were a few cases in which respondents closed down their blogs in favour of fresh starts.

26 See Kiss’s (2007) editorial on the cancellation of Kathy Sierra’s (a design and programming consultant) appearance at the ETech conference in San Diego as a result of death threats received on her weblog (http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/organgrinder/2007/03/blogs_gone_bad_the_misogyny_of.ht ml).

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The final three questions were directed as an opportunity for respondents to offer opinions regarding the impact of weblogs on the distribution of news and political discourse in Iran, the influence blogging has amongst young people in Iran and the Iranian blogosphere in general. Overall respondents tended to support the claims of previous research by describing blogging’s ‘deep impact’ on breaking state control on the media. One respondent suggested that blogging has had ‘a lot of impact’ because ‘information circulation is against dictatorship/totalitarians’ and by blogging ‘we can say, “I think differently”. In the TV, newspapers and even election all the people are same but in blogs you can see the diversity’.

Another respondent commented on the impact blogging has on revealing wrongdoings by using an example of a person being spared their life due to campaign pressure and ‘the force of exposure’ circulated through weblogs. Although measuring the actual impact that phenomena has on particular situations is near impossible it is interesting to find that respondents in general agreed that blogging has had at least some impact, that is

…It has had enough to put the government on alert, i.e. arresting dissenters. A whole department has been set up to deal with it so it must have an impact. It has opened new perspective naturally and provided a platform for free debate – as the Internet allows for all. How influential it is I cannot measure, it must be at least equal to the methods set up in tackling it. Outside of the country it has provided other nations with less bias news, by this I mean that the heavily influenced media of nations like America can directly read about life in Iran and not hear it filtered through their news sources.

In responses discussing the influence of blogging on Iranian youth, respondents tended to be more divided. Whilst some claimed blogs are ‘very influential’ others argued that they are ‘not so influential’ because ‘a large group of active bloggers or blog readers doesn’t exist’. With a population of ‘72Million people’ and only ‘200,000’ active blogs one respondent argued it is difficult to measure the size of their overall influence but emphasised their importance amongst a minority of Iranian youth i.e. the ‘middle class’. Other respondents highlighted the influence of blogging in terms of providing youth with

Alexis Rigby: 060111799 57 Looking for Freedom: An Exploration of the Iranian Blogosphere communication platforms to ‘read true news without censorship’, practice ‘freedom of speech’, ‘organise protests and petitions’ and ‘discover new things’.

4.3 Qualitative Textual Analysis Observations

The information included in the table below illustrates the object-orientated motivations, i.e. ‘objects’ that motivate blogging activity such as desires to keep in touch with friends (Nardi, Schiano and Gumbrecht, 2004: 225), and blog characterisations (Herring et al, 2004: 1, 3) of this investigation’s sample. Like Nardi, Schiano and Gumbrecht’s (2004: 225) sample, objects found within this research were not mutually exclusive but instead motivated more by one object than the other. Although blog characterisations tended to be much more clear-cut there were blogs that crossed characterisation boundaries. Therefore the term ‘notebook’ is used here to describe those blogs with content that alternates between objective filtering or reporting of events and subjective commentary or self-expression. In blogs characterised as notebooks, hyperlinks were often fewer in contrast to filter examples in which links appear frequently in blog posts.

4.3.1 Object-oriented Motivations and Blog Characterisations

Object-orientated Motivations Blog Characterisations

Filter Journal Notebook Motivations In Out In Out In Out Update others on activities and whereabouts 0 0 3 0 2 0 Express opinions to influence others 3 7 0 0 4 3 Seek others’ opinions and feedback 0 0 0 0 1 0 ‘Think by writing’ 1 1 1 0 0 2 Release emotional tension 0 0 0 1 0 1

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4.3.1.1 Update Others on Activities and Whereabouts/Journals and Notebooks

The Adventures of Mr Behi, DDMMYYYY, Lost for Words, Pinkfloydish and View from Iran are all examples found within the sample used to inform and update readers on their activities and whereabouts. Generally these five bloggers use their personal weblogs to keep in touch with friends and family, record events and ‘document life’. DDMMYYYY, a dual nationality British-Iranian, for instance created his weblog in the latter half of 2005 after his move to Iran in order to keep in contact with his family (in England) and ‘catalogue his life experience’. In ‘Auntie’s Letter’ (24/10/05) the author posts a response to a letter sent to him from his aunt with regards to the sacrifice of a sheep in his honour at a family gathering in Iran.

…I must say that I myself am suprised [sic] at your perspective of Iran. Firstly the practice of sacrificing a sheep is far from the norm and has come as very strange news to my Iranian friends here. These friends are very suprised [sic] by how religious and traditional my family are, so please don’t view my family activity as normal. The sheep incident I found very respectful and a nice gesture… initially, I – like you – was mortified, but upon learning that this was to be a charitable gift for the local-poor people I was a little won over.

Not only does this example demonstrate blogging as a social activity between the author and his family in England but in extending this social interaction beyond just the author and his aunt it illustrates the greater capacity of blogging to explore cultural differences. In describing an event, such as sheep sacrifice, the author is attempting to bridge a gap in his reader’s knowledge of Iran and Iranian traditions.

Within these blog postings authors also tended to include photographs of their activities or places they had visited as well as links to Wikipedia for further information about subjects. Largely these weblogs are journal-like in style, used as an efficient means to socially interact with readers but in was not uncommon for author’s to use their weblogs as notebooks to link their internal thoughts with external events.

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4.3.1.2 Express Opinions to Influence Others/Filters and Notebooks

This second motivation was found to be the most common across the whole blog sample, indicating the tendency of bloggers to write opinion pieces in which claims are made with regards to specific or current events. In expressing their opinions these bloggers use their weblogs as vehicles of self-expression to share ideas, inform others and offer advice.

Inside Iran is one of the more overtly political blogs used within the sample to emphasise the use of blogs as platforms to engage in free expression. Jadi had spent more than six years writing for his Persian weblog but after it was filtered in Iran he switched to writing in English to continue discussing ‘freedom of expression, censorship, the Internet and filtering’. As English is less likely to be filtered in Iran than Persian (see OpenNet Initiative, 2006: 1) it suggests that Jadi uses English as an evasive linguistic strategy to avoid censorship. Typically Jadi uses his weblog to circulate news on demonstrations and links to petitions in opposition to restrictions on free expression (including bloggers unconnected to Iran). For example on the 18th of May 2006 he directs readers to sign petitions calling for the release of a Vietnamese doctor and Chinese dissident arrested for criticising their government.

Jadi’s weblog is particularly interesting because it is written inside Iran and the author makes no attempt to keep his identity hidden. His posts are filled with anti-government themes but rather than making direct political claims to criticise the regime he uses his blog to highlight government contradictions and propaganda, often through extensive use of imagery, in order to provoke and influence readers (Photo Essay of Police Attack to Women’s Peaceful Gathering, 12/06/06; Wear CHADOR and be Free, 31/10/06 and Brutality of Special Forces against ‘Bad Hejabs’, 22/05/07). He claims ‘I don’t want to accept this regime but I am not a revolutionary’ and although he often writes of his ‘anger’ he recognises that there is little he can do other than publish his ‘right to object’.

Another example of this motivation to express opinions and influence others is found in Cityboy Blog, a weblog written by an Iranian student in London. In contrast to Inside Iran

Alexis Rigby: 060111799 60 Looking for Freedom: An Exploration of the Iranian Blogosphere the author is an anonymous writer who regularly makes explicit and direct attacks on the ‘illegitimate’ Islamic Republic calling Iran’s government ‘the world’s biggest sponsor of terrorism’ whose Mullahs ‘force Islam into every aspect of Iranian life’. He accuses the regime of attempting to cleanse and transform ‘the beautiful Iranian culture of love, brother and sisterhood, tolerance and respect to their culture of darkness where life has lost it’s meaning for most of the people besides making enough money to go from day to day’ (12/05/07).

Cityboy is also one of the few Iranian bloggers who discusses the ‘stupidity’ of religion and ‘disgraceful acts’ committed in the name of religion. In this entry entitled Religious Stupidity: It’s not just Islam! Vatican and Amnesty (14/06/07) he discusses the decrease in numbers of church goers throughout England and west Europe and the move by the Vatican ‘urging all Catholics to stop donating money to Amnesty International, accusing the human rights group of promoting abortion’. He includes a picture of the marks left by lashings of an Iranian homosexual couple to stress the intolerance of religion to accept sexual diversities (see Couple tortured for being Gay, 21/06/07).

4.3.1.3 Seek Others’ Opinions and Feedback/Journals

Only one blog in the sample was found to be motivated by the action to ‘seek others’ opinions and feedback’, and that was Insomnia Times: The Words and Works of Arash Khosronejad. Arash describes himself as an anti-war peace activist but his poems tend to abstractly describe his depressive ‘loneliness’ and absence of self thus demonstrating the author’s motivation to re-discover the self (Amir-Ebrahimi, 2004) through the recognition of his social performances.

All of my personalities are the same. Very simple and easy that you can recognize. When I walk through the streets, I use my first face, And when I find you,

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Or when I arrive somewhere, I use my another face. But all of my personalities are the same, And the first and second face are just an identity. Something screams in my skull "Don’t come around with a hidden identity."

I hope there isn't any third and fourth. Because this creature lives forever !

4.3.1.4 ‘Think by Writing’/Filters, Journals and Notebooks

For Nardi, Schiano and Gumbrecht (2004: 227) to think by writing means to work through the writing process as a discipline and social procedure. They suggest blogging helps an author to make sense of situations and develop their understandings, which are stimulated by the writer’s consciousness of an audience. Although the motivations of Under Underground arguably fall into four of the five object categorisations, overall the practice of blogging is used here to improve the author’s English (I Come from Iran, 10/05/04). It is unusual for blogs of this motivation to feature entries as short as those of Under Underground as often the process of writing is used to develop arguments and justify them with evidence. These blog posts feature greater depth and detail and are more article-like in nature with well-thought out theory and analysis.

Iranian Prospect and the Plateau of Iran are two examples of ‘outsider’ weblogs motivated by the writing process in which the authors filter information and debate perspectives. Omid Memarian (author of Iranian Prospect) essentially uses his blog to self-publish news analysis and reflect upon opinions in the media regarding Iran. Whereas the anonymous author of Plateau of Iran, like A Persian Perspective is motivated by the writing process to generate discussion about Iranian history, culture, society and politics in opposition to the Islamic Republic, terrorism and religious rule.

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4.3.1.5 Release Emotional Tension/Filters and Notebooks

The use of blogging to release emotional tension is one of the more difficult types of motivations to classify due to the hybrid nature of those blogs. For example although Ladysun is fundamentally motivated by the author’s desire to record her ‘observations from this crazy world’, filtering news stories and commenting on situations in Iran, more often than not it reflects the author’s need to ‘let off steam’, reassess life and confess to the trappings of depression and loneliness.

On the 1st of August 2007 she posted an entry called Depressed in which she describes her highly emotional state due to her ensuing divorce, schoolwork pressures and the news of Jafar Kiani’s27 stoning in Iran. Like one of the examples used in Nardi, Schiano and Gumbrecht’s (2004: 227) findings such entries as low profile confessions (05/08/07); the agony of loneliness (05/08/07); the three-month law (18/08/07) and he’s a cheater (19/08/07) are all alarming posts which appear ‘deeply self-absorbed, hermetic [and] depressive’ (2004: 227) with perfect spelling and grammar, ‘apart from the non-standard capitalisation’ of blog headings that like Lara (Nardi, Schiano and Gumbrecht’s example) is uncharacteristic of Ladysun. The author is also aware that although her audience may not be able to understand her entries writing them makes her feel better; ‘I know I don’t make any sense with all these ramblings. I’m so bitter. I just had to let it out’ (depressed, 01/08/07).

27 Jafar Kiani was stoned to death on the 5th of July 2007 after spending more than eleven years in prison for his ‘adulterous relationship’ with partner Mokarrameh Ebrahimi. Although married their relationship was believed by the judge who issued the sentence of stoning to be illegitimate (see Amnesty International, http://www.amnesty.org.uk/news_details.asp?NewsID=17408).

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4.4 Self-censoring Linguistic Strategies

In the absence of media free from state interference in Iran, weblogs have become increasingly important circulating news, challenging social norms and expressing contradictory opinions. Yet active censorship and frequent crackdowns on blog activity increase the risks associated with writing about controversial matters. The findings of this investigation’s blog sample suggest that the purpose of blogging is to practice free expression and in doing so despite strict state censorship even the most mundane activities described within blog posts are in some way politicised (see Pinkfloydish: Let the Game Begin, 20/02/04). The act of blogging for Iranians is thus the creation of political discourse and the themes described below outline some of the strategies that Iranian bloggers use to cope and mitigate the risks associated with blogging.

However, even though attempts are made by bloggers to self-censor their writing they are not always successful in doing so. During December 2006 Ladysun vents her frustrations on her English blog about the filtering of her Persian blog,

…I’m just amazed how stupid these people are who can’t stand a simple blog that is mostly about personal life of its author. I was careful not to write radical stuff in my Persian blog, because of the fear of filtering (yes, self-censorship!). If they keep blocking it, I will change the tone of my writings there. Why should I keep quiet when they want to shut me up?

4.4.1 Reporting Experiences and Personal Evaluation

One of the more common strategies used by bloggers inside Iran to write about sensitive issues is to provide commentary on a situation, subject or news analysis. DDMMYYYY often retreats to subjective personal experiences to report upon the general opinion of Iranian people he comes into contact with on a daily basis. Very rarely does he directly state his personal opinions. In Barbecue Chats (17/01/06) he transcribes a conversation

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(which is characteristic of his entire blog) he had with Iranian expatriates at a family barbeque on a short trip to Dubai.

“What do you think of Ahmadinejad?” “Do you think there will be a revolution soon?” “What do the people think of [insert political situation here]?” “Why did you go?”

…She leant forward whilst lowering her voice to let me know that she understands the comment in question and is most amused by the vociferous response… “It’s turning into a police state”, she told me and nervously went on to present evidence…

So in conclusion: 1. Amusing 2. No 3. They think it’s a joke 4. I ask myself this everyday

Whether this example is a conscious process of self-censorship undertaken by the author is unclear, yet in describing the woman’s nervousness and lowering of her voice it at least implies his awareness of the risks associated with criticising the regime.

Other examples of this linguistic strategy are often found in View from Iran and Inside Iran. Both of these two weblogs have used conversational transcripts to describe encounters in shared taxis. View from Iran even has a label entitled taxi talk, which such entries are ‘tagged’ with. Chitchat in a Taxi, the Taxi Sign and the War on Iran (Inside Iran, 16/02/07) is a description of Jadi’s journey to work in which he shared a taxi with ‘an elderly driver, an older female front passenger, a young girl of around twenty and a male of similar age’. He argues that typically ‘people always start to talk about politics, economy and everyday issues in these taxis’ and suggests that because of this ‘many people believe that our secret police has many of these taxi to know about peoples opinions’.

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In response to the latest police crackdown on ‘Bad Hejab28’ during April 2007 ‘Esther’29 of View from Iran transcribes a conversation had with a taxi driver in which he asked her to ‘please fix your scarf, not because of me but because the religious police are checking’ (22/04/07). Earlier that day the driver had been stopped by the religious police threatening to impound his car, arrest the young female passenger and let her dog go on the streets where it would no doubt be killed as a stray. Yet unlike DDMMYYYY ‘Esther’ (an American blogger living in Iran with her Iranian husband) regularly adds her own personal take on the restrictions in Iranian society, which strongly affect her,

…Enforcing Hejab makes me feel insecure and mistrustful. I am nervous walking down the street. I do not trust anyone. Why should I? I am wearing this scarf and manteau by force (…) I wear Hejab because of force and that force has been even more visible this past week. Force will never allow me to make a religious choice of my own free will. It’s a ridiculous notion (26/04/07).

4.4.2 Metaphor and Analogy

The second evasive linguistic strategy to emerge from the data collected is the use of metaphors and analogies. In general such strategies were more common in weblogs written outside Iran, particularly Opium and Saffron and Plateau of Iran. For the author of Opium and Saffron blogging is an opportunity to explore the close relationship between Iran’s cultural paradoxes (outlined in Chapter 3). For example in Hejab Defiance: Political Statements or Fashion Statement (22/05/07) he compares the recent photographs30 circulating the Iranian blogosphere of women with blood on their faces, as a result of brutal police attacks against ‘Bad Hejab’, with women of the Qajar era who would besiege the Shah with mud smeared on their faces to ‘signify their desperation to feed their families’. Here he is suggesting that Hejabs symbolise the deprivation of

28 Refer to appendix 7.5 29 Esther is a pseudonym for Tori Egherman who has now revealed her true identity, as she no longer lives in Iran. 30 See appendix 7.5 for photographs taken from Kamangir’s photoblog.

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Iranian women and by wearing ‘Bad Hejab’ these women are protesting against their inequalities. Yet rather than directly comment on the situation he concludes his entry with a poem written by Forugh Farrokhzad31 to emphasise the subtleties of sub-texts and provoke readers to draw their own conclusions by reading between the lines.

Like Opium and Saffron, Plateau of Iran is another example of an Iranian blog aiming ‘to shed some light on all matters related to Iran, as well as to, hopefully, generate some discussion about Iran’s history, culture, society, politics and much more…’ (01/06/07). Many of the Plateau’s entries are implicitly political focusing around democracy, Persian history, human rights and freedom of expression in contrast to the Islamic Republic, terrorism, Mullahs and religious rule (see News about Zoroastrianism, 24/02/07; The First Declaration of Human Rights, 24/02/07 and a three-part series on the Persianization of Islam). In discussing the Hejab crackdown at first he is unsure why the issue is so prominent with intense media coverage whilst other more important issues, in his opinion, are overlooked. However only one month later he seems to have reconsidered its significance and suggests that, ‘this campaign [of terror] is as far as many more people are concerned, the last nail in the coffin of Islam’.

4.4.3 Anonymity and Pseudonymity

The final evasive linguistic strategy found within this research refers to blogs written by anonymous or pseudonymous authors. In this investigation’s blog sample it was more common for bloggers outside Iran to conceal their real identities in favour of pseudonyms for their own safety and the protection of their family and friends, and in some cases their choice of pseudonym also revealed a lot about their motivations for blogging.

Of particular interest is the pseudonym Lotf Ali used by the author of Opium and Saffron. Lotf Ali Khan was the last Persian Shah from the Zand dynasty (1769-1794) who after a prolonged siege inside the city of Shiraz was captured, blinded and tortured to death by

31 Forugh Farrokhzad is a famous Iranian poetess and film director who died in1967.

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the leader of a fifteen-year rebellion against the Zands, Agha Mohammad Khan. The defeat of Lotf Ali consequently marked the final eclipse of the Zand dynasty, supplanted by Agha Mohammad Khan as the first Qajar Shah (Lotf Ali, 21/02/07). In using the name Lotf Ali the author of Opium and Saffron arguably positions himself as a regent of Persian culture and defender of Persian history.

Kamangir (meaning luminous in Persian), a pseudonym adopted by the author of an Iranian weblog with the same name is a reference to ‘Arash the Archer’. In Persian mythology Arash was a great archer who saved Persia32 from the Turan conquest by shooting an arrow from the Damavand mountain area (located towards the southern coast of the Caspian Sea) to the Oxus River in central Asia, marking the new border of Persia with Turan (see Ferdowsi, 1886). The author of Kamangir is called ‘Arash’ and consequently adopted the name Kamangir to represent his Persian heritage. However, during May 2007 Hossein Derakhshan used his blog, Editor: Myself, to reveal Kamangir’s true identity in response to Arash’s frequent personal attacks aimed at Derakhshan,

…Writing under a pseudonym, unless your life or safety is being threatened, means that you you [sic] are a coward who can not take responsibility for anything you write or say. It also means, as a sign of hypocrisy, you always want to leave room for changing colors, by killing one pseudonym and creating another one (Editor: Myself: Arash ‘Kamangir’ Abadpour, 11/05/07).

Kamangir’s reaction to his ‘outing’ seems less concerned with ‘the serious danger [Derakhshan] is causing’ but rather the ‘silly action’ of ‘the godfather of the Iranian blogosphere’ to publish this post ‘with a fake time stamp’ (The Enemy and the Idiot, 06/05/07). This example highlights the difficulty of being and staying anonymous or pseudonymous whilst also being part of the Iranian blogging community. Not only do bloggers have to be wary of having their true identity discovered by the Iranian government, but they also risk being ‘outed’ by other bloggers – either accidentally or on purpose.

32 It was only after the first Shah that Persia became known as Iran.

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4.5 Discussion Summary

As a platform for free expression, the Internet provides a space to practice free speech and has allowed Iranians to challenge restrictive social norms by openly discussing political, social and cultural trends. For Petrossian (2006: 2) the practice of blogging has liberated a ‘traditionally silenced Iranian society’ by creating a space to ‘break the silence’, ‘challenge social norms’ and ‘depict a true Iran’.

In breaking the silence Iranian bloggers such as Cityboy, Inside Iran, Kamangir and Opium and Saffron are increasingly sharing diverse perspectives, spreading news and championing political expression. Whilst Under Underground, Pinkfloydish and Plateau of Iran blog to challenge Iran’s prohibiting conservative social norms by discussing forbidden topics in order to overcome the restrictions of a conservative society. For example in discussing Partytime! (15/03/04) Pinkfloydish describes how although fun is predominantly forbidden in Iran private parties are frequent and allow men and women the opportunity to socialise together in mixed social groups. Yet other bloggers such as DDMMYYYY and View from Iran use their blogs to depict a ‘true Iran’ relating their experiences of every-day life to counter distortions and misrepresentations of Iran and Iranian culture often found in mainstream media. Like those of Petrossian (2006: 2) the findings of this research indicate that the Iranian blogosphere has become an important aspect in creating and exploring Iranian identities for both Iranians living in Iran and the Iranian diaspora by allowing them to experience influences from both inside and outside the Islamic Republic.

However this investigation has highlighted the constant difficulties Iranians inside Iran face when attempting to practice free expression due to the technical restrictions and moral prohibitions imposed by the government on Internet access. Whilst on the one hand blogs are empowering Iranians by offering a public space to participate equally and freely in public discussion, on the other they are less empowering because expression, especially the expression of political ideas, is prohibited in Iranian society and authorities thus filter such content believed to be a threat to the government or national security.

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Yet as sophisticated filtering software has been deployed by the Iranian government Iranian bloggers have created new methods to counter active censorship, for example proxy servers, web by email and evasive linguistic strategies. Some of the linguistic strategies found within this research include: the omission of direct personal evaluation in favour of reporting facts (Kamangir, Inside Iran, Iranian Prospect and Under Underground), retreats to personal experiences and commentary (DDMMYYYY and View from Iran), disclaimers of personal opinions (Pinkfloydish, This is not a Political Post, Just my Worries!: 25/02/04), reporting material as the opinion of others (DDMMYYYY and View from Iran) and anonymity or pseudonymity (Opium and Saffron and Cityboy). By implying meanings, rather than explicitly stating opinions, these bloggers also seek to represent the complexities of Iran’s social paradoxes. Although generally those bloggers claim to avoid discussing politics blog discourse has been increasingly politicised by the actions of the Iranian government to control Internet usage. In focusing on domestic issues and internal policies these blogs are not political in the traditional sense but rather in the sense that they address politicised concerns.

Before conducting this investigation it was assumed that there would be many differences between Iranian blogs inside and outside Iran in terms of content, character and motivation, because whilst blogging in Iran is used to get around limitations, restrictions and lack of freedom of speech, for bloggers outside Iran this is not the case. In blogging outside of Iran and the Islamic Republic’s theocratic governance Iranians in the diaspora are generally not at risk of prosecution or imprisonment for their online activities. Yet in targeting similar audiences and blogging about similar subjects and events the similarities between Iranian bloggers inside and outside Iran typically out number their differences. The practice of self-censorship for example had been assumed to feature predominately in blogs inside Iran yet for Iranians in the diaspora self-censorship is a method used, like those bloggers inside Iran, to avoid government filters and consequently the loss of their audience inside Iran.

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Iranians, particularly young Iranians, both inside and outside Iran are thus using blogs and the Internet to represent the dichotomy of ‘modern Iran’ and the ‘outmoded’ Islamic Republic. They are attempting to highlight their disparate opinions through debating, discussing and arguing about Iranian identity, politics and culture to rediscover their cultural heritage and create a Iranian image displaced from common misperceptions.

…Whether it is to voice provocative political views or share personal thoughts, this young generation of Iranian bloggers is trying to highlight Iran’s cultural diversity and the complexities of Iranian civil society and politics. The Iranian blogosphere is constructed around an imagination of Iran and a nostalgic yearning for a cultural past (Petrossian, 2006: 3).

The overall findings of this research indicate that whilst bloggers inside Iran tend to blog about their every-day activities to depict a true Iran, bloggers outside Iran typically use their blogs to act as alternative news sources to break what they perceive to be a silence. These findings also indicate a high level of mixed motivations and characteristics, which suggest that Iranians are more likely to use their blogs as notebooks containing a mix of external and internal information about a subject. Even so, although Iranian bloggers outside Iran were often found to use their blogs to challenge social norms, depict the true Iran and undermine attempts to control content they were also found to have a greater purpose for blogging, that is to reconnect with their homeland and cultural traditions.

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5. Conclusion and Recommendations

In an attempt to investigate the experience of blogging for Iranians inside Iran in comparison to the Iranian diaspora this research has indicated that although content, character and motivations vary, technical and moral restrictions imposed on the Internet by the Iranian government often effect Iranians in the diaspora in similar ways to those inside Iran. For Iranians outside Iran active Internet filtering affects the extent to which they practice self-censorship to avoid being filtered and consequently losing a large proportion of their audience inside Iran, whereas for those inside Iran the practice of self- censorship is more pervasive due to the threat of prosecution for cyber-dissidence. This suggests that the government’s attempts to control Internet usage are, to a certain extent successful, as increasingly bloggers have begun to censor their own expression. Thus evasive linguistics strategies such as retreats to personal experience, metaphor and anonymity are commonly exercised by Iranian bloggers using the Internet as a platform to comment, discuss and evaluate domestic politics, rather than world events, in order to circulate news, challenge social norms and portrait a truer picture of Iran than the exaggerated stereotypes accustomed to mainstream media.

Therefore whilst in Iran the Internet and blogging is increasingly being used as a method to get round the limitations, restrictions and lack of freedom of speech imposed by their government, outside Iran they are used to reconnect bloggers with their homeland and cultural heritage. Inside Iran blogs frequently record their author’s lived experience and everyday activities whereas outside Iran bloggers more often use their blogs to filter alternative news and comment on the distorted representations of Iran’s rich cultural histories. On the whole these blogs offer Iranians new ways to share and experience social spaces, interact with international audiences and communicate freely by serving as vehicles of self-expression and self-empowerment.

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Other methods highlighted within this research used by Iranians to cope with Internet censorship included exposing filtered content and blacklisted webpages. When the Iranian government blocks sites, bloggers post updates to make people aware of censorship and propose new ways to work around it. For example when the photo-sharing website Flickr was blocked by the Iranian government a technically savvy Iranian Hamed Saber created a Firefox plug-in called Access Flickr to bypass filters.

People are increasingly aware of censorship activity due to bloggers such as Inside Iran and by alerting international audiences it means that more people are coming together to work around it. The circulation of information regarding Psiphon (Under Underground: Do you have a Psiphon Address?: 02/12/06), a software project that allows citizens in uncensored countries to provide unfettered access to the net through their home computers to friends and family living behind firewalls of state censors33, is undermining the government and consequently their attempts to control Internet content.

The majority of respondents who participated in this investigation’s survey described themselves as young, educated, computer-literate males thus supporting Halevi’s (2006: 18) claims that a large proportion of Iran’s Internet users are from ‘fairly privileged classes’. Therefore the impact that the Internet and consequently blogging has on the wider Iranian society is difficult to measure as the spread of network access is limited to a minority of Iran’s total population. As more Iranians gain access to the Internet, blogs are likely to become more influential on Iran's evolving democracy. Yet by actively censoring web content, limiting download speeds and arresting popular bloggers it suggests that the Iranian government are taking the threat, or potential threat, of cyber- dissidence seriously. In creating a voice online essentially these bloggers are reaching out to global audiences, undermining the control of the Islamic Republic and in doing so are creating a revolution within a revolution.

33 http://psiphon.civisec.org/

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5.1 Recommendations for Further Research

How Persian and English language weblogs differ in terms of content, character and motivation was beyond the scope of this investigation, which focused on the minority of English language weblogs in the Iranian blogosphere. Although attempts were made in the survey to address this issue without the knowledge of Persian or the resources to translate material it was difficult to further interpret the themes outlined by these respondents. Therefore a suggestion for future research would be to investigate how the experiences of blogging in first languages compare to those in second or even third languages.

Another interesting avenue to pursue would be the pervasiveness of Internet filtering and an exploration of the effectiveness methods such as proxy servers have to counter censorship. The OpenNet Initiative (2006) has essentially paved the way for such research by documenting the nature of filtered content and the technical capabilities Iran has to do so, yet in generating data direct from proxy servers such as Anonymizer a research project such as this could fundamentally lead to a more comprehensive analysis of how Iranians cope with censorship.

Word Count: 19,479

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7. Appendices

7.1 Glossary

Included here is a list of terms used throughout this research with a brief definition for quick reference:

Keyword Definition Ayatollah A sign or ‘token of God’. A title given to high-ranking Mullahs. ‘Bad Hejab’ (see Compulsory Islamic dress in violation of the mandatory dress Hejab) codes in Iran’s Islamic Republic. ‘Bad Hejab’ generally refers Iranian women wearing the Hejab (in compliance with but not in spirit of the law) but in such a way as to reveal some or almost all of their hair. Basij A volunteer police-like force or militia otherwise known as the ‘Resistance Force Mobilisation’ or, more commonly, the ‘religious police’ established to bolster manpower of the military. Basiji A name given to members of the Basij. Blogger The author of a weblog Blogging The act of writing/maintaining a weblog Chador A semi circle of black fabric held together in front of the body to cover a women’s femininity from head to toe, usually worn by conservative Muslims. In Iran a woman may not enter a court, mosque or hospital without chador. Fatwa A religious ruling or edict issued by an Islamic cleric or qualified jurisprudent. Hejab (Hijab) A noun based on the root meaning of veil. In Islam it is the principle of modesty and refers not only to the physical appearance of modest dress (for both men and women) but also social behaviour and religious values. More commonly Hejab

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refers to an Islamic headscarf worn by women to cover their hair. Majlis Iran’s parliament established in 1906 by Muzaffar al Din Shah after the Constitutional Revolution of 1905. Manteau A less conservative knee-length overcoat worn instead of chador. Mullah A religious cleric. Persian/Farsi Iran’s national language. Shah A Persian term signifying king or ruler. Reza Shah adopted the title ‘Shananshah’, which means the Shah of Shahs. Shia/Shi’ism/Shi’ite Shia Islam is one of the two main branches of Islam who revere twelve Imams descended from the Prophet Muhammad. In contrast to Sunni Islam (the majority sect of Islam across the Arab world), Shi'ites believe that religious authority passed from Muhammad through his family/bloodline (i.e. his cousin and son- in-law Ali). In Iran, where Shias are in the majority, Shia Islam also refers to the Islamic Revolution as a political movement. Supreme Leader The head of the Islamic Republic otherwise known as ‘God’s Representative on Earth’. The first being Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, his successor and current Supreme Leader of Iran is Ayatollah Ali Khamanei. Weblog/Blog A frequently updated website consisting of dated entries in a reverse chronological order. Zoroastrianism A monotheistic religion based on the teachings of Zoroaster, found in the history of ancient Persia who saw the universe as a battle between good and evil. Zoroastrians number around 300,000 in Iran and are an officially recognised religion.

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7.2 Images – Filtered Content and Connection Speeds

Screenshots taken in Iran of web content blocked by the government. The first is for the photo-sharing website Flickr and the second is of the social networking website Myspace.

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The images below illustrate a typical Internet connection speed in Iran (image 1) in comparison to an average domestic broadband speed in the UK (image 2), which is one hundred and fifteen times faster. This first image was taken from View from Iran: If you Wonder why I am not Reading or Posting…, 09/12/06.

In having such a slow Internet connection speed it would be near impossible to view multimedia such as videos, photos or audios used on a majority of webpages. An mp3 is typically 3-5 MB and a Youtube video is 10-20 MB.

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7.3 Survey Template 1. Looking for Freedom: An Exploration of the Iranian Blogosphere The purpose of this survey is to support an investigation into the influence of Iranian blogging and patterns of blog discourse. The project is in part an analysis of the linguistic strategies used in weblogs and the increased importance of blogs as a medium for free expression and in part a survey of the opinions and viewpoints of Iranian bloggers.

Your participation in this survey is entirely voluntary and all twenty-six questions are optional. Any information you give whether personal or not will remain anonymous.

For further information please visit http://www.lexrigby.com or email [email protected].

This research project is a partial requirement of a Masters degree in Librarianship at the University of Sheffield 2. About You 1. How old are you? nl-15 nl16-25 nl26-35 nl36-45 nl+46 2. What is your gender? nlMale nlFemale nlPrefer not to answer 3. Where do you live? nlIran nlUSA nlCanada nlUnited Kingdom nlOther (please specify) 4. What is your nationality? (Select multiple answers for dual nationalities) gedIranian gedAmerican gedCanadian gedBritish gedOther (please specify)

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3. About You (cont...) 1. What is your employment status? nlSelf-employed nlEmployee/worker nlFreelancer nlUnemployed nlStudent nlOther (please specify) 2. What is your highest educational qualification? nlElementary/junior/high school nlSix form/college nlUniversity Bachelor degree nlUniversity Masters degree nlPhD/Doctorate 3. How long have you been using the Internet? nlLess than a year nl1-3 years nl4-5 years nl5 years or more 4. How often do you access the Internet? nlMore than once a day nlOnce a day nlOnce every few days nlOnce a week nlOnce every couple of weeks nlOnce a month nlOther (please specify) 5. From where do you access the Internet? (Select more than one answer if applicable) geHome geWork geSchool/college/university geInternet cafes geAt a friend's house geOther (please specify)

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4. About Blogging 1. How long have you had a weblog? nl0-6 months nl7-12 months nl1-2 years nl3-4 years nl4 years or more 2. How many weblogs do you have? nl1 nl2 nl3 nl4 nl5 or more 3. Why did you start blogging?

4. Why do you continue to blog?

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5. About Blogging (cont...) 1. Who is your target audience?

2. What is your blog about?

3. What other blogs do you read? Why?

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6. About Blogging (cont...) 1. Do you blog in English/Persian or both? If both, are there any differences between what you blog about in each language?

2. What subjects, if any, do you avoid blogging about? Why?

3. Have you ever been asked to remove all or some of the contents of your weblog? By whom and what did you do?

4. Have you ever experienced difficulties in accessing other weblogs? Why?

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7. About Blogging (cont...) 1. Do you publish any personal information online such as your name or contact details?

2. Have you ever experienced threatening or abusive behaviour due to the contents of your blog? Can you give examples?

2. Have you ever experienced threatening or abusive behaviour due to the contents of your blog? Can you give examples?

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8. About Blogging (cont...) 1. What kind of impact do you think that blogging has had on the distribution of news or political discourse in Iran?

2. How influential do you think blogging is amongst young people in Iran? Why?

3. Do you have any further comments to make about blogging or the Iranian blogosphere?

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7.4 March of the Bloggers

This table contains a list of ‘cyber-dissidents’ arrested for their online activity and includes estimates of their duration in prison (where known) and a description of charges brought against them. All the information has been collected via Reporters without Borders (http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=20) and Persian Impediment (http://www.persianimpediment.org/mfx.html).

Name Date Duration Description Kianoosh Sanjari Oct 2006 3 mths Along with hundreds of others detained in Evin prison Sanjari spent three months locked up following his reports on clashes between security forces and supporters of the Shi’a cleric Ayatollah Sayed Hossein Kazemeyni Boroujerdi. He has been arrested for his activities on several occasions previously, the first being when he was just 17 in 1999 for protesting against the closure of a newspaper called Salam. Abed Tavancheh May 2006 16 dys A student at Tehran university arrested for posting reports and photographs of some of the demonstrations at the university on his weblog. Hossein Dec 2005 3 mths Abdollahpour was arrested and imprisoned Abdollahpour for allegedly insulting officials on the Expediency Council as well as insulting the former President Mohammad Khatami. Omid Sheikhan Oct 2005 3 mths Sheikhan maintained a weblog featuring satirical cartoons of Iranian politicians. He

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also received 124 lashes for his online activity. Ahmad Seyed Jun 2005 6 mths Some of the charges brought against the Saraji journalist Saraji included ‘propaganda against the Islamic Republic’, ‘conspiracy to topple the government’, ‘insult to the leader of the Islamic Republic’ and ‘apostasy’ (which was later dropped). After 4 months imprisonment and 30 lashes he was freed by division 2 of the East Azarbayjan appeal court and eventually escaped to Turkey. Mohammad Reza Mar 2005 3 dys Fathi was summoned by the morality Fathi squad for his criticism of the provincial government and the mayor of Saveh in his popular weblog. In a letter to President Mohammad Khatami, he voiced exasperation at this ‘scant capacity of civil servants to accept criticism’ but was subsequently arrested. After questioning he was ordered to close down the weblog or face further retribution. Mohammad Reza Mar 2005 6 mths Found guilty of criticising Ayatollah Nasab-Abdollahi Khameni in an open letter published online. He was charged with ‘spreading lies’ and ‘insulting the leader’. Najme Omidparvar Mar 2005 A Human Rights activist arrested for reporting on the arrest of her husband (Reza Nasab Abdolahi) on her weblog, Dawn of Freedom. She was also 3 months pregnant with her first child at the time.

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Mojtaba Lotfi Feb 2005 3 yrs 10 A young cleric accused of posting ‘lies’ on mths his website regarding Islamic reform, 21st century Islamic jurisprudence and Human Rights abuses by state clerics. He also discussed how to deal with social problems such as drugs and the spread of AIDS. However it was his article called Respect for Human Rights in cases involving Clergy that earned him the sentence. Arash Sigarchi Feb 2005 14 yrs On February 22nd Sigarchi was handed a 14 year prison sentence for espionage and insulting the country’s leaders. As a journalist he is guilty of weblogging and contributing to American Radio Farda. After a payment of 1 billion Rials he was released on March 17th 2005 with a 3-year suspended sentence agreed in June (although Saigarchi wasn’t notified of this until January). He was then unfortunately sent back to prison in January 2006 4 days after he was given this 3 year suspended sentence for ‘insulting the Supreme Guide’ and ‘propaganda against the regime’. Farid Modaresi Nov 2004 8 mths Modaresi was arrested and imprisoned for insulting the former President Mohammad Khatami on his weblog. He was released on a bail charge of 150 million rials yet Khatami never actually pressed charges. Mojtaba Saminejad Nov 2004 18 mths Saminejad’s brush with the authorities is a Death complicated one. He was arrested in

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Penalty November for reporting in his blog on the repealed detention of 3 individuals arrested for their online activities. Bail was agreed in January and he was released, however after failing to pay the bail (which was doubled) and publishing another article insulting the prophets he was re-arrested in February 2005. Mahboubeh Nov 2004 23 dys As the editor of the quarterly women’s Abasghalizadeh publication Farzaneh, Abasghalizadeh was imprisoned for writing for a number of online publications. Fereshteh Ghazi Oct 2004 Another online journalist for Etemad arrested for her contributions to reformist websites. Babak Ghafouri- Oct 2004 2 mths 1 of the 6 online journalists and Azar webloggers targetted in this month’s Internet crackdown. Charged with acting against national security, disturbing the public mind and insulting sanctities he was kept in solitary confinement. Fereshteh Qadi Oct 2004 2 mths Guilty of contributing to online journals and working as a journalist for Etemad he was held for 2 months. Omid Memarian Oct 2004 3 mths Memarian, an active contributor of reformist websites was detained on the order of Tehran Prosecutor’s Office’s Ninth Chamber after a failed attempt to fly to the States for a conference. His charges include: ‘spreading propaganda against the regime’, ‘threatening national security’,

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‘incitement to rebellion’ and ‘insulting the leading figures of the regime’. His computer and personal notes were confiscated and he was ordered to write a letter of repentance as a condition of his 500 million Rial release. Masoud Ghoreyshi Oct 2004 An Iranian journalist arrested because of his technical support work for the Organization of Islamic Revolutionary Fighters’ website. Rozbeh Mir Sept 2004 2 mths Arrested for his contributions to reformist Ebrahimi websites. Amir Mojiri Sept 2004 2 mths An online journalist charged for Internet activity against the moral codes of the Islamic state. Javad Gholam Sept 2004 Imprisoned on a variety of charges Tamayomi including: the participation in formation of groups to disturb national security, propaganda against the state, dissemination of disinformation to disturb public opinion by writing articles for newspapers and illegal internet sites and interviews with foreign radio broadcasts. Mehdi Derayatai Sept 2004 3 mths A Rooydad helper committed to solitary confinement. Shahram Rafizadeh Sept 2004 3 mths A victim of the Rooydad (reformist online daily paper) crackdown. Hanif Mazuri Sept 2004 3 mths Imprisoned for helping Rooydad, a website close to the major reformist party. Reza Vatanikhah Aug 2004 3 mths Arrested for acting against national security, disturbing the public mind, and

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insulting sanctities by posting his musings on a weblog. He spent most of his prison sentence apparently in solitary confinement. Ahmad Reza Shiri Feb 2004 21 dys In his blog Shiri called for a boycott of February’s legislative elections and as a result got his blog closed down, his computer confiscated and a suspended 1 year prison sentence. Sina Motallebi Apr 2003 23 dys The first person ever to be imprisoned for the contents of a weblog. His political writings led to a 23 day stint in solitary confinement.

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7.5 Images – Bad Hejab

The images below are of an Iranian female taken from Kamangir’s photoblog of the ‘recent police brutality against improper veiled women in Iran’ (Iranian Bloggers Raid against Police Brutality, 21/05/07).

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The images below are of a government-sponsored advertisement campaign highlighting ‘Bad Hejab’.

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