{"id":261,"date":"2008-04-13T09:00:36","date_gmt":"2008-04-13T13:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/mesh\/2008\/04\/mapping_iran_blogosphere\/"},"modified":"2008-04-22T03:56:55","modified_gmt":"2008-04-22T07:56:55","slug":"mapping_iran_blogosphere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mesh\/2008\/04\/mapping_iran_blogosphere\/","title":{"rendered":"Mapping Iran&#8217;s blogosphere"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>From MESH Admin<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/research\/internetdemocracy\" target=\"_blank\">Internet and Democracy Project<\/a> at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard Law School, has just published a new study, <em>Mapping Iran\u2019s Online Public: Politics and Culture in the Persian Blogosphere<\/em>. The image below is the resulting map of the Iranian blogosphere (click on the image for a larger view). From the study&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/publications\/2008\/Mapping_Irans_Online_Public\" target=\"_blank\">abstract<\/a>:<!--more--><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Social network analysis reveals the Iranian blogosphere to be dominated by four major network formations, or poles, with identifiable sub-clusters of bloggers within those poles. We label the poles as 1) <em>Secular\/Reformist,<\/em> 2) <em>Conservative\/Religious,<\/em> 3) <em>Persian Poetry and Literature,<\/em> and 4) <em>Mixed Networks&#8230;.<\/em> Given the repressive political and media environment, and high profile arrests and harassment of bloggers, one might not expect to find much political contestation in the blogosphere. However, we identified a subset of the <em>secular\/reformist<\/em> pole focused intently on politics and current affairs and comprised mainly of bloggers living inside Iran, which is linked in contentious dialog with the conservative political sub-cluster. Surprisingly, a minority of bloggers in the <em>secular\/reformist<\/em> pole appear to blog anonymously, even in the more politically-oriented part of it; instead, it is more common for bloggers in the <em>religious\/conservative<\/em> pole to blog anonymously. Blocking of blogs by the government is less pervasive than we had assumed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Download the report <a href=\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/sites\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/files\/Kelly&amp;Etling_Mapping_Irans_Online_Public_2008.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a> (pdf). And while we&#8217;re at it, MESH would like to take the opportunity to thank the Berkman Center for hosting the MESH website.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/sites\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/files\/Iran_blogosphere_map.jpg\" rel=\"_lightbox\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/mesh\/files\/2008\/04\/iranblog.png\" align=\"bottom\" height=\"433\" width=\"482\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From MESH Admin The Internet and Democracy Project at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard Law School, has just published a new study, Mapping Iran\u2019s Online Public: Politics and Culture in the Persian Blogosphere. The image below is the resulting map of the Iranian blogosphere (click on the image for a larger view). [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1620,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[781,622,103],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-iran","category-media"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mesh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mesh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mesh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mesh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1620"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mesh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mesh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mesh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mesh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mesh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}