Amir-Ebrahimi 351Notes
1.s study was part of a larger research project, “Authority and Public Thi
Spaces in Iran,” supported by the International Collaborative Research
Grants Program (ICRG) of the Social Science Research Council’s Program
on the Middle East and North Africa (2002–2004). Other members of
the project working on different topics were: Guity Etemad (Iran), Azam
Khatam (Iran), Modjtaba Sadria (Japan), and Uğur Komecoğlu (Turkey).
y study on Iranian cyberspace is based on regular consultation of M
Iranian weblogs, personal interviews, and eight focus groups that I con-
ducted with bloggers in Tehran between 2003 and 2006.^ Focus groups were
conducted with different groups of youth between 20 and 30 years old.^ Two
of the focus groups were preliminary; one was with editors and publishers
of Weblogistan, the Crystal City (2003), which gathered posts from vari-
ous weblogs; another focus group was organized with feminist bloggers;
and four others were with ordinary bloggers. Focus groups were mostly
organized around topics such as perception about self-expression, life in
physical and virtual environments, questions of identity, interaction and
relationship between two sexes, public and private lives, and freedom and
censorship. This paper was initially written before the post-election events
of 2009; therefore I did not refer to this very important period, which dras-
tically changed the role of the Internet in Iran and made it much more
political.
2.penNet Initiative, O Country Study: Internet Filtering in Iran 2004–2005, 5,
http://opennetinitiative.net/studies/iran.
3.iniwatts Market Rearch, “Internet Usage in the Middle East,” http://www. M
internetworldstats.com/stats5.htm (accessed 15 February 2010); Ministry
of I.C.T. (Information and Communications Technology), Iran, 86, Sālῑ por
dastāvard” [2007/08: A year full of benefits], http://ict.gov.ir/newsdetail-
fa-2536.html (accessed 15 November 2008).
- See Salman's Weblog, http://www.globalpersian.com/salman/weblog.html.
- See http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.hoder.com.
6.ee “Performance in Everyday Life and the Rediscovery of the ‘Self’ in S
Iranian Weblogs,” Bad Jens 7 (September 2004), http://www.badjens.com/
rediscovery.html. Also published in Medien & Zeit, Kommunikation in
Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, Jahrgang 21, Vienna 4 (2006): 23–31.