Hardly a week goes by without Iran being featured prominently in the news. Usually the news is about the country’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s inflammatory rhetoric or its nascent nuclear program. But Iran is not the monolithic entity it is often portrayed to be in Western, and especially U.S., media.
While the Iranian government retains a monopoly on all television and radio broadcasting, the country continues to have an independent, though reduced in size and severely battered, print media. Although many independent and reformist newspapers were launched during the years of the Khatami presidency (1997-2005), hardliners in Iran have shut down more than 100 of those publications and jailed dozens of journalists in the process.
It is perhaps no surprise then that during those years Iranians began taking to the Internet in droves. Between 20 and 25 million Iranians have regular digital access, giving the country the highest Internet penetration rate in the region. According to research by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, the Iranian blogosphere currently boasts some 60,000 regularly updated blogs of virtually every political stripe. Others estimate that the number is closer to 100,000. Even Iran’s president and supreme leader maintain blogs. “Weblogistan,” as Iranians casually refer to the teeming and diverse world of Farsi blogging, is alive and well despite a seemingly endless barrage of legal (and at times extralegal) persecutions.
Add new comment