334 Mediated Publics
Weblogistan: Virtual new networks of Iranian community
The Iranian blogosphere is a fast-growing public sphere formed by indi-
viduals and different networks and communities. It is almost impossible
to give exact figures for the population in Weblogistan or to estimate, for
instance, the percentage of women versus men (because many use pseud-
onyms), average age, social class or level of education of bloggers. The only
information we have comes from case study surveys and documented
observations. According to studies presented in the seminar “Internet and
Women in the Third Millenium,” held in Tehran in 2006, women consti-
tute about 47 percent of Internet users in Iran,^25 while according to Jordan
Halevi’s 2006 study based on a sample of 325 blogs, 33.5 percent of bloggers
are women.^26 This information changes constantly depending on the case
study, as well as with the entrance of new bloggers into Weblogistan. In my
focus groups, many participants said that it “is easy to guess the gender of
bloggers, especially when you are used to reading different blogs every day.
You can distinguish easily who is a woman and who is a man.” In general,
women write more about personal and social issues, while men have more
specific blogs about politics, technology, journalism, religion and so on.
n Iran, as elsewhere, the first bloggers were mostly youth; today, I
however, many middle-aged bloggers are part of the mainstream Iranian
blogosphere. According to Halevi’s survey, 90 percent of Iranian bloggers
were between 20 and 32 years old, but this percentage can change with
different networks, where sometimes the average age is higher. In fact,
it was not long before many journalists, intellectuals (writers, philoso-
phers, university professors, and artists), social activists (feminists, envi-
ronmentalists, NGO workers), former politicians (especially reformists
and Khatami’s colleagues, such as his adviser, Mohammad Ali Abtahi)^27
and religious and conservative personalities joined Weblogistan and cre-
ated their own networks in the blogosphere. Student populations, too, are
diverse, including many female and male students of theology known as
Talabeh bloggers.^28
eblogistan is vitally diverse, not only in terms of the social posi-W
tion of members, but also their geographic location: hundreds of thou-
sands of Iranian bloggers are scattered throughout many cities in Iran
or countries throughout the world. The Iranian blogger diaspora resides