I&D Blog

From I&D Guest Blogger Hamid Tehrani, Global Voices Iran Editor

The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) at the end of 2008 made a historic announcement: a project to launch 10,000 blogs for the paramilitary Basij forces. (1)

IRGC’s official press organ, Sobh Sadegh, writes that it considered the Internet and other digital devices including SMS as a threat to be controlled. It announced that the 10,000 blogs will promote revolutionary ideas. IRGC considers the Internet as an instrument for a “velvet revolution” and warned that foreign countries have invested in this tool to topple the Islamic Regime.

The use of social networking or blogging by military forces is not new. The U.S. Army has launched a video series that documents events in Iraq. (2) A series of blogs have also covered military activities in a number of countries, including Sri Lanka. (3)

What makes the IRGC project particularly interesting is its uniquely large scale, its timing and its possible consequences.

For years, different political groups, ranging from leftist students and women activists to ready-to-be-martyrs Hezbollah members, have been active in the blogosphere. Reformist politicians and hardliners such as Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad discovered blogging years ago.

It seems that IRGC, an ideologically motivated military force with important business interests in the country, is acting like a supermarket that wants to establish its shops all over the city and shut down small groceries by any means necessary. But why now?

Uncontrolled bytes bite

Iranian authorities control all TV and radio programming in the country. Almost all newspapers that express an independent viewpoint have been banned. The only media tool available for Iranian citizens and the civil society movement is the Internet. And they use it as a tool to both inform and organize.

For example, last year information about corruption emerged on Iranian Web sites and blogs, which had an impact in real life. Such news challenged Ayatholas, informed people about student demonstrations and the repression of women by security agents, and forced some high-ranked officials to resign. The Islamic republic finally had to face non-controlled information and the reaction from the public.

In early summer 2008, a member of Iran’s Judicial Inquiry and Review Commission, Abbas Palizdar, created a scandal by accusing several top clerics and influential members of the Islamic Republic of corruption in a speech at Booali University in Hamadan. (4) He offered details of many illegal business deals and criminal offences, and pointed the finger at several of Iran’s leading political figures, including influential Ayatollahs. Video footage of the speech spread through blogs and Internet media. Palizadar was arrested, and for the first time high-ranking clerics were named and shamed.

In another event in summer 2008, students at Zanjan University in northwest Iran recorded and uploaded a video of their school’s vice president, Hassan Madadi, with his shirt unbuttoned. He was allegedly preparing to have sex with a female student. Several Iranian websites and blogs say the female student had alerted her university’s Islamic Student Association that he had pressured her to have sex with him. (5)

These two examples only begin to show the growing impact of Iranian citizen media.

Iranian bloggers have used the Internet to talk about demonstrations against dictatorship and gender discrimination, or to support political prisoners.

According to officials, 5 million blogs and sites have been filtered. But it seems that filtering has not had the desired impact.

A good example of the inefficiency of filtering is the Campaign4equality case. This feminist site has been filtered 18 times. It seems that civil activists have not been discouraged by the filtering policy.

The Iranian government continues to put pressure on cyber activists but it is almost impossible to fight the ones who are anonymous.

Since filtering and repression does not stop the civil rights movement from growing, then it is IRGC’s turn to play the game.

IRGC is the military force that enforces Islamic Revolution principles, just like the Turkish army that protects secularism. IRGC realized that the Internet and the free flow of information is out of its control and can hurt the regime. Does IRCG have a solution? Is 10,000 is the magic number?

Mass production of toothless soldiers

The Basij (Persian for “mobilization”) is a large and omnipresent paramilitary organization with multifaceted roles, such as repressing urban unrest. It created human-wave attacks against Iraqi forces during the final years of the Iran-Iraq war. It seems that IRCG took the wrong virtual path through Tehran’s streets and battlefields in that war.

The presence of 10,000 Basiji blogs without interesting content and quality will fail to attract readers or promote any ideas. The Islamic Republic’s state-controlled media has been a failure for three decades. The Iranian regime in recent years launched several TV channels, but even poor-quality satellite dishes became a must-have for millions of Iranians to access banned foreign films, music clips or news.

The Islamic Republic easily banned certain journals and magazines, but it failed to attract readers to its conservative Keyhan and similar publications.

The Islamic Republic will likely end up with another failed scenario in the media world, this time in the blogsphere.

The Iranian State has supported a cleric-controlled organization, the Office for Religious Blogs Development, to promote religious bloggers in the last two years. Yet, this organization has come under fire from Islamists for its lack of revolutionary zeal.

Blogs are personal and accessible, with no intermediaries. They are where people express their ideas and opinions. In contrast, Basij blogs probably will be a mass production of obedient voices who will be careful about the content of their posts as Big Brother watches them.

According to Harvard University’s Berkman Center study, a very significant number of Islamist bloggers who support the Islamic Republic write anonymously.(6) The main reason is that red lines are not defined in the Islamic Republic. These same ill-defined red lines will restrain any free action and thought in mass-produced blogs. They are an invisible border that makes people shut up and be censored.

Basij forces have a reputation for loyalty to Islamic leaders — ready to repress and sacrifice. Such characteristics are not an asset in the Iranian blogosphere. Perhaps the IRGC should open a military base in Second Life and try to chase Iranian activists there, if it is able to find any.

The detention of prominent Iranian-Canadian blogger Hossein Derakshan (aka Hoder) has been confirmed. Everyone has been concerned since reports of his arrest were confirmed by friends and family about a month ago. The question was how long and on what charges the Iranian authorities would be holding him.

In 2006, Hoder, who has dual citizenship with Canada, visited Israel. Possibly in connection with this trip and the recent high pressure diplomatic sparring between Iran and Israel, the Iranians now accuse the blogger of espionage. Matching the gravity of this political charge, an Iranian Revolutionary Court (designed to deal with issues of national security) will be taking on the case.

Hoder helped to ignite the Iranian blogosphere, now one of the world’s most vibrant and diverse (see Berkman’s research report on the topic).  His blog, an often insightful and incisive voice in Iranian politics, has not been updated since October when he was detained.

Check out this provocative and fascinating piece by Evgeny Morozov of the Open Society Institute. The central question it raises, whether the Internet is really a force for democratic change, is as complex as it is necessary to ask. Cyber-savvy young voters (see also our coverage of “Born Digital”), kindled by Obama, may have heralded a civic reawakening for America, but as Morozov rightly points out, one should be cautious about overstating the internet’s power as a catalyst for an activist citizenry, especially in authoritarian countries. As Morozov sadly notes:

The Berlin Wall may have fallen, but the Chinese Firewall has been erected in its place.

The role of the internet in democratization is sometimes ambivalent or contradictory. The Berkman study of the Saffron Revolution in Burma turned on this question. Why was the internet, so crucial in organizing and publicizing protests, not ultimately effective in overthrowing Burma’s repressive military junta?

Morozov provocatively points to the web’s endless stream of entertainment as a possible explanation for the malaise of democratic movements. The internet is a sirensong of cheap thrills and escapism, foreign movies and sex. It is slowly transforming “digital renegades” and potential activists into “digital captives” of Hollywood distraction. As Antony Loewenstein, author of a book about blogging in repressive regimes, remarked at a recent Berkman luncheon, far more bloggers want to meet girls than agitate for reform.

Having said all that, Morozov’s conclusion — that young people in repressive regimes prefer Paris Hilton clips to freedom — strikes me as too cynical. Though no quick fix panacea, the internet has contributed to greater participation and group association. Strong correlations between increased internet capability and democratization, though not ultimately conclusive, surely reinforce this belief.

Perhaps the changes have less to do with formal democratic movements than the immense proliferation of speech on the web. This is what makes the Iranian blogosphere so vibrant, the Chinese one so resilient and the Burmese one so dedicated, despite varying levels of autocratic control. The web has broken the authoritarian choke-hold over information, even if what is flooding in from the outside is imperfect or censored. Web 2.0 technology is clearly one source of this altered dynamic; it’s easier to gag a newspaper than censor a thousand blogs.

The more impossible internet output becomes to contain, the more plausible I think it is that censorship regimes will crack, even ones as massive as the Chinese firewall. This may not be democratic activism of the most visible form, but perhaps it gives more radical democratizing movements a chance to succeed.

According to this article in the Globe and Mail, the well-known Iranian blogger Hossein (Hoder) Derekshan (who has dual Canadian citizenship) has indeed been arrested, but it is not clear if he is being “detained.” Details are still murky on the reasons for his arrest, but his family confirms that he has been arrested.

As Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy, James Glassman has vamped up efforts to debate with jihadists on the internet. In fact, Glassman has completely retooled the federal government’s virtual presence, hoping to harness the power of web 2.0 interactive technology to fight a “war of ideas, ” a sort of public diplomacy 2.0.

During a recent appearance at the New America Foundation (an mp3 of his talk can be found here), Glassman made this particularly striking comment about the internet:

This new virtual world is democratic. It is an agora. It is not a place for a death cult that counts on keeping its ideology sealed off from criticism. The new world is a marketplace of ideas and it is no coincidence that Al Qaeda blows up marketplaces.

Glassman has been pushing for open debates between State Dept. representatives and members of foreign publics on Facebook and Iranian blogs. He helped to organize a conference of international bloggers, not all of whom were vetted for pro-Western views. He helped to fund (but not to direct or control) a series on Morrocan television about American Islam and religious tolerance and to sponsor a legal debate about Guantanamo at a Kuwaiti university.

Of course, it is easy to see in all of this simply the newest twist in a global propaganda battle, one smacking moreover of Cold War influence jockeying. Yet Glassman, a conservative libertarian naturally uneasy with excessive state power and control, takes, I think, a more nuanced position. He seems to believe that instead of lecturing the world about “American values” from our city on a hill, public diplomacy efforts should be aimed at the facilitation of their practice and I think he’s right. An actually open debate about democratic values (not simply PR to “sell” American policy) will expose extremism for the shallow dogmatism and violence it actually represents.

Instead of defensively exclaiming the superiority of Western civilization (so often the timbe of existential “the West vs. Islam” discussions), the State Department should encourage debate and dissent, dialogue and peaceful protest, or, as Glassman put it, “conversation, not dictation.” It should make space for moderate forces to stand on their own (away from Washington’s deadly imprimatur) and it should take seriously the grudge, borne by much of the world, that America arrogantly dismisses its input.

In diplomatic speak, Glassman is trying to rebuild “soft power,” the good old battle for “hearts and minds” (though see Marc Lynch’s thoughts on Glassman and on the “war of ideas” in general). Glass believes the election of Barack Obama could itself be a catalyst for selling democracy and restoring America’s tarnished international reputation.

But he further, and rightly I think, believes that the internet, a naturally democratic communication platform, is where such a battle of ideas will ultimately take place. Social networking sites decentralize officially sponsored messages, be they from Al-Qaeda or the State Department, opening them up to the rigor of debate and democratic discourse. Instead of being feared, social networking sites should be encouraged. Let go a bit of the officially controlled message, of the narrow and current foreign policy agenda of the United States, and I think America can show itself through the more complex prism of its strengths, ideals and imperfections. Glassman believes that that is how the fight is won.

Yesterday, the Boston Globe ran a piece on US-Iran relations. With all the news cycle obsession over a possible military conflict, this may seem like nothing new. The unique twist, however, is that instead of focusing on outspoken president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the article follows the considerably more complex relationship between bloggers, both Iranian and American, in dialogue with each other.

Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran’s diplomatic relationship with the United States has been tense, to say the least. Publicly at least both governments have exhibited mutual distrust, if not downright hostility. Average people writing blogs in Iran, however, seem to think that if not rapprochement, at least some form of dialogue with the West could be healthy.

The Berkman Center has been interested in the Iranian blogosphere ever since we published a full-length quantitative report on it. One of our key findings was that, although Iran harasses and jails bloggers, the Iranian blogosphere itself is wide-ranging, tolerant of a surprising amount of dissent, and spread across numerous ideological persuasions. Contrary to popular perceptions about Iran and the internet, it is not just young democracy dissidents writing blogs; instead, there are distinct sectors of reformists (both expat and native), conservatives, Shi’a religious blogs and Persian poetry enthusiasts.

The upshot of this diversity is that it is, to a degree, democratic in character. It resembles (even with the inconsistent interference of authoritarianism) the vital social organism which generally makes up public communication in a democracy. Though speculative, the question of whether the nature of blogging is responsible for this is still worth asking.

When, as for blogs, there are low barriers (economic or ideological) to expression, a continuum of democratic discourse seems to have less difficulty cropping up. The wider and more ample these networks of individuals become, the less plausible it is that the government can contain or adequately filter them (unlike the old mass media model). In a sense, blogs distribute influence and, potentially, power.

The Globe piece highlights a particularly interesting development in all this. Despite the best efforts of Iranian censorship and a hostile American embargo, bloggers and internet users from both sides are communicating, exchanging information and ideas.

“People are relating to the Americans on the computer,” he [Farhad Ghorbani, a 24-year-old journalist] said. “We can chat. Regardless of the political views and what the politicians do, we want to have this kind of cultural relationship with the United States.”

As if in response, both governments have begun to copycat these techniques of more open exchange. Ahmadinejad writes a blog in which he periodically addresses Americans, and even the State Department has started organizing informal debates with Iranian officials on blogs.

Perhaps if this trend continues, the political divide between Iran and America can be broached by the internet instead of diplomats, by ideas instead of drums of war.

I’ve been lucky enough to be part of two great conversations at Berkman today, which both boil down to increasing the number of voices on the Internet and in the technology field. Ultimately, we can’t have a liberal networked public sphere anywhere in the world if rich white guys in urban areas (the coveted ‘latte drinking pansy’ voting bloc) are the dominate group in every conversation.

First, I sat in on a meeting of the gender and technology group at Berkman which is asking what I think is a difficult but important question–why are women so underrepresented in the technology field and on the Net. As our blog research has shown, women are certainly blogging less than men in Iran, Russia, and the Arabic blogospheres. Check out the group’s blog and facebook group–and hopefully an event on the topic is coming soon to push the conversation forward. Seems like there isn’t enough research in this area either.

Second, David Sasaki from Rising Voices spoke today about efforts to increase the number (and quality) of underrepresented groups in online conversations. David showed some great videos from African bloggers and also discussed the micro-grants they are giving for citizen media training. He mentions how much demand there is now for this type of training, which was funded by a Knight Challenge Grant. He shared some great examples of what participants have done as part of the project–one of my favorites is a teacher blogging from the smallest school in the world–a 4 student school in a remote Iranian fishing village. On the site I also discovered Iran Inside Out, a great video project.

In many cases this type of work allows us a better, unfiltered view of countries like Iran that are either ignored by most traditional media, or only discussed in terms of the nuclear issue or other limited frames.

We are pleased to release the full Persian translation of our case study: Mapping Iran’s Online Public: Politics and Culture in the Persian Blogosphere. In this study we used social network analysis to map the online network combined with human coding of hundreds of Persian language blogs to reveal the issues that are most important to different parts of the network, as well as basic data on the bloggers in each pole. Thanks to Mahsa Rouhi for translating the case study, and to Hamid Tehrani at Global Voices for reviewing the draft. Please help us share it with Iranian bloggers and Web sites, who are an important audience for our work. Comments on our research are always welcome on the blog.

Young bloggers are more worried about shopping, sex and music than politics, according to a recent article by Anthony Loewenstein. Loewenstein still finds that there is a unique power to blogging, though, when he writes:

Across the world, young generations are challenging tired state media by writing online about politics, sex, drugs, relationships, religion, popular culture and especially Angelina Jolie. From Egyptian activists opposed to female circumcision to outspoken, pro-Western women in Cuba, people are being empowered by new technology to create spaces away from the prying eyes of meddling authorities.

Lowenstein’s views are based on interviews he did with bloggers, a bit different than our more empirical approach, but still interesting findings, and more in line with a journalistic analysis anyway. It seems that bloggers around the world are arguing more for incremental reform than revolution. Lowenstein quotes an Iranian blogger in Tehran, “Most of the people (I know are) in favour of reform, not revolution, because people are too tired to experience another revolution.” A common refrain he heard from bloggers in other countries he visited, including Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Cuba and China.

Yet, he still found an increase in awareness about political rights because of the Internet and satellite TV in the countries he visited.

He also talks about censorship in China, noting as we did that many Chinese are not as sensitive as those in the West regarding censorship. And in China, he also quotes a young Internet user who says she and her friends prefer to use the Internet for “entertainment, sharing information, earning money and other fun.”

Loewenstein concludes, however, that these types of activities are still revolutionary:

Letting people speak and write for themselves without a Western lens is one of the triumphs of blogging. The culture of blogging is unlike that of any previous social movement. Disjointed and disorganised, its aims are deliberately vague. While many want the right to be critical in the media, others simply crave the ability to date and listen to subversive music. That in itself is revolutionary for much of the world.

I’m looking forward to reading Loewenstein’s new book, The Blogging Revolution, which forms the basis of his article–but only after I finish John Palfrey and Urs Gasser’s new book on digital natives, Born Digital, which has also just been released!

As a follow up to our post on the draft Iranian law that would expand the number of crimes that can be punished by death, including forming Web sites or blogs that promote prostitution or apostasy, we were quite concerned to see that the bill passed on the first reading by a vote of 180 to 29, with 10 abstentions. While a number of bloggers have focused on the letter of the law, some Iranians seem much more concerned with the spirit of the law and how it will be applied. The quite legitimate concern of online free speech advocates is that the Iranian regime will use the overly broad and poorly defined terms like “Fesad and Fahsha” (corruption and prostitution) to prosecute and even put to death political opponents.
People guilty of these crimes will be considered “Mofsed o fel alrz” (corrupters on Earth) and “Mohareb” (a person that fights an Islamic government). According to Islamic Shari’a , the punishment could be as high as the death penalty. Once (and if) the legislation is approved in the council, there will be committees formed in Tehran and in the centers of all other states which will monitor the execution of this law. Furthermore, the media is to cooperate with the committees (involved and formed) to promote the objectives of this law.

The UN Declaration of Human Rights‘ Article grants us all “the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” When bills such as the above are proposed, we all shiver and murmur that this is the feared apokalupsis eschaton!

Unfortunately, Iran’s position with respect to bloggers is not unique. As Human Rights Watch reports, past prosecutions of bloggers around the world have often used a number of overly broad and poorly defined terms to prosecute those that upset the regime. In the past, it has often been on “national security” grounds. For example:

• (February 2005, Iran) The Iranian government sentenced blogger Arash Cigarchi to 14 years in prison for expressing his opinions on the Internet and in the international press. Charges brought against him included espionage, “aiding and abating hostile governments and opposition groups,” endangering national security and insulting Iran’s leaders.

• (December 2006, Iran) Branch 1059 of Tehran’s Judiciary commenced a trial against Roozbeh Mirebrahimi, Shahram Rafizadeh, Omid Memarian, and Javad Gholam Tamimi, on charges of “participation in formation of groups to disturb national security,” “propaganda against the state,” “dissemination of disinformation to disturb public opinion by writing articles for newspapers and illegal internet sites,” and “interviews with foreign radio broadcasts.”

• (August 2007, Russia) Blogger Savva Terentyev was arrested and sentenced to one year probation for suggesting his local police should be set on fire in the town square(1).

• (June 2007, Syria) Human Rights Watch has documented at least five cases since 2005 in which critics of the government were arrested because of posting or emailing critical comments or information. In particular, Tarek Biasi was arrested because he “went online and insulted security services.” He was held incommunicado by the authorities and then sentenced to three years imprisonment for “diminishing national feeling” and “weakening the national ethos.”

• (March 2008, Egypt) Blogger al-Sharqawi and 16 other bloggers (including bloggers Wa’il Abbas and `Ala’ Seif al-Islam), journalists and activists were cited as being responsible for “spreading false news” that could harm Egypt’s image abroad and organizing demonstrations. l-Sharqawi told Human Rights Watch that his captors beat him for hours and then raped him.

• (February 2007, Egypt) Blogger Abdel Nabil Suleiman (“Kareem Amer”) was sentenced to four years in prison for “incitement to hatred of Islam” on his blog and for insulting Mubarak(2). It’s interesting to note that these charges stem from Article 102(bis) of the Egyption Penal Code which allows for the detention of “whoever deliberately diffuses news, information/data, or false or tendentious rumors, or propagates exciting publicity, if this is liable to disturb public security, spread horror among the people, or cause harm or damage to the public interest”, Article 176 of the Penal Code which allows for the imprisonment of “whoever instigates…discrimination against one of the people’s sects because of race, origin, language, or belief, if such instigation is liable to disturb public order”, and Article 179 that allows for the detention of “whoever affronts the President of the Republic.” (3)

Although Article 19(3) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) allows restriction of expression in the interest of “the rights or reputations of others, the protection of national security or of public order, or of public health or morals”, capricious, harsh punishments are not justified. As Hamid Tehrani suggests on Global Voices, certain regimes have and will continue to stifle online opposition, and bills such as the above will only make it possible to “legally execute” political opponents.