In September 2001, when the student Salman Jarbar established the first Iranian weblog, no one imagined that blogging would become a social phenomenon in Iran. But over the past seven years blogs have come to fulfil the role of liberal newspapers, civil society organisations and even private gatherings. In 2004 unofficial estimates placed Persian as the fourth most common language in the blogosphere.
The state's backlash against the virtual community started in 2003. Sites and blogs that clashed with official state policies were blocked, but censorship then expanded to cover blogs with the term "woman" or "gender" in the title.
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