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Library | Item Barcode | Call Number | Material Type | Item Category 1 | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Searching... | 30000010293980 | JQ1789.A15 S64 2010 | Open Access Book | Book | Searching... |
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Summary
Summary
The protests unleashed by Iran's disputed presidential election in June 2009 brought the Islamic Republic's vigorous cyber culture to the world's attention. Iran has an estimated 700,000 bloggers, and new media such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube were thought to have played a key role in spreading news of the protests. The internet is often celebrated as an agent of social change in countries like Iran, but most literature on the subject has struggled to grasp what this new phenomenon actually means. How is it different from print culture? Is it really a new public sphere? Will the Iranian blogosphere create a culture of dissidence, which eventually overpowers the Islamist regime? In this groundbreaking work, the authors give a flavour of contemporary internet culture in Iran and analyse how this new form of communication is affecting the social and political life of the country. Although they warn against stereotyping bloggers as dissidents, they argue that the internet is changing things in ways which neither the government nor the democracy movement could have anticipated.
"Blogistan" offers both a new reading of Iranian politics and a new conceptual framework for understanding the politics of the internet, with implications for the wider Middle East, China and beyond.
Author Notes
Annabelle Sreberny is Professor of Global Media and Communications and Director of the Centre for Media and Film Studies at SOAS, University of London. Gholam Khiabany is Reader in International Communications in the Department of Applied Social Sciences, London Metropolitan University.
Reviews 1
Choice Review
Sreberny (Univ. of London, UK) and Khiabany (London Metropolitan Univ., UK), scholars who specialize in media and communication, provide a descriptive narrative of the proliferation of social media in Iran. Noting the state monopoly over legal broadcasting and the repression of the print media in Iran, they contend that Web logs (blogs) present a natural outlet for dissident speech. However, while claiming that Farsi is among the most common languages used in blogs globally, the authors are careful not to exaggerate the influence of social media in Iran, pointing out practical constraints such as the expense of Internet access, bandwidth limitations, and government censorship. Moreover, regime supporters are also well represented in cyberspace and contribute to a diverse array of Web sites, which belies the notion of universal opposition to the regime among techno-savvy Iranians. Sreberny and Khiabany decline to generalize beyond Iran, suggesting that the influence of social media must be analyzed in context, mediated by cross-cultural differences. Overall, the book focuses more on brush-clearing work, including the physical development of Iran's Internet infrastructure, the identity of early users, and the nature of regime censorship, than on political analysis. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate, research, and professional collections. C. W. Sherrill Troy University
Table of Contents
| Introduction |
| Communications and Politics in the Islamic Republic |
| Building Iranian Cyberspace |
| Meet the bloggers |
| The Voice of Blogistan |
| Controlling the uncontrollable: The State and Censorship |
| The Future Introduction |
