By Shawn Woodley
On June 12 leading contender, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, ran against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in an election proving to be highly consequential. Iran’s candidates employed unconventional campaign tools such as blogs and social networking sites like Facebook, connecting with the student electorate unlike any other time before. As more of the Iranian political discourse takes place online, profiling the Iranian blogosphere provides increasingly useful insights into the Islamic Republic’s political pulse.
The Iranian blogosphere is among the richest and largest in the world with over 60,000 active blogs. The third largest blogosphere in the world, bloggers in Iran are bolder and more diverse than expected, often using their real names and engaging in a political discourse online that is unseen offline.
Speaking at a U.S. Institute of Peace panel on the future of public diplomacy, John Kelly, founder and lead scientist of Morningside Analytics noted that, “we face a new architecture of public communication. We are going from the hub-and-spoke model of mainstream or mass media, the few megaphones and many listeners, to something called the networked public sphere.” That transformation, which is well underway in the United States and South Korea, will expand rapidly due largely to increasing Internet connectivity and bandwidth around the world and the young age and technical sophistication of new Internet users.
The Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School mapped Iran’s blogosphere and profiled it in an April 2008 report titled Mapping Iran’s Online Public: Politics and Culture in the Persian Blogosphere. Much like computer generated maps of internet activity or social networking; blogosphere maps are spheres where every point represents a blog. Points are drawn closer together based on the number of hyperlinks connecting them to one another or same news sources. Naturally, likeminded bloggers link to one another and certain news sources more often and are so drawn closer together forming clusters. These clusters are densely connected informational communities where ideas, opinions, and information travel quickly.
The Iranian blogosphere can be subdivided roughly into three primary communities. The most closely knit of these is the secular/reformist community. This online community, according to the Berkamn Center’s report, “features a relatively high proportion of prominent women bloggers, which is notable since prominent bloggers in the other clusters are typically male.” Blogs in this community typically reflect secular or reform-minded views and most remain accessible despite government efforts to block them.
Within the secular/reformist online community, there appears to be two distinct, though overlapping subgroups. The first of these is issues oriented and covers politics most frequently, and features women and expatriates blogging on issues ranging from women’s right and political prisoners to cultural issues, including cinema, journalism, books, and satire. The second subgroup is focused on hard politics and consists mostly of male bloggers living outside Iran and using their real names. They blog on current affairs, journalism, politicians and issues such as drug abuse and environmental degradation in Iran.
It is interesting to note that the secular/reformist online community hovers in cyberspace close to the Web sites of Former President Khatami, whom many regard as a moderate. Initially, Khatami’s online presence was tracked (while Mousavi’s was not) due to predictions made while researching the blogosphere that he would run against Ahmadinejad. Khatami’s endorsement of Mousavi suggests that the secular/reformist community may be similarly oriented toward Mousavi.
Though less tightly interconnected than the secular/reformist community, Iran’s religious/conservative online community hovers nearer to Ahmadinejad in cyberspace. Within this online community, the vast majority of blogs are infused with religious references and generally support the legitimacy of the Islamic Republic and the Supreme Leader (though not necessarily particular politicians or government policies). One subgroup deals primarily with domestic economic issues and secondarily with foreign policy. Here, political speeches are typically quoted and relatively mild criticism is common. A growing share of the religious/conservative subgroup is comprised of young male students who see religious issues as the most dominant topics of concern.
To many conservatives, the entire purpose of the Islamic Republic is to prepare the way for the expected return of the Twelfth Imam of Shia Islam. These “Twelvers” are a large subgroup of the religious/conservative online community focusing intensely on al-Mahdi’s immanent return and the subsequent creation of the perfect Islamic society.
Interestingly enough, the third largest community, accounting for roughly one quarter of the Iranian blogosphere, is centered on poetry. The Berkman Center report explains that most of the blogs at this loosely interconnected region of the Iranian blogosphere feature, “poems (original, quoted, and historical) as well as analysis and discussion of poetry, with a particular focus on love poetry and Ghazal, a traditional poetic genre. Poetry is a major form of cultural production in Iran, historically and, unlike in the West, today as well.” Iran is a nation of poets. These poets are not obviously oriented toward either Khatami and Mousavi or Ahmadinejad.
The profile or the Iranian blogosphere is especially helpful in understanding the constituencies. Secular/reformists are unlikely to have seen progress over the last four years under Ahmadinejad on issues that matter most to them. Conservatives, especially concerned about the state of the declining Iranian economy, are likely to be frustrated with a combination of external factors, economic policies, and current leadership. Religious voters and “twelvers” may heavily consider the relationship between Ahmadinejad and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
In Iran, the political discourse, too dangerous to have in cafes and living rooms, is taking place on blogs and online social networks. Online political discourse will play an increasingly significant role in the public debate as new and diverse voices are brought introduced. Mapping the Iranian blogosphere is a helpful beginning to understanding the ideals of the Iranian people and the direction they wish to take their nation.
