Editing Blogging in Iran (section)

==History==
Early 2001 was the beginning of emergence of a blogging culture, which rapidly developed. the Iranian government, which had strict controls in place for the print media and had shut down as many as 100 print newspapers.<ref>Alavi, Nasrin. "We are Iran" Soft Skull Press, 2005</ref>  Iran has been listed consistently as among the bottom countries in violation of freedom of the press by Reporters without Borders.<ref>"Cntrl+Alt+Delete: Irans Response to the Internet." Iran Human Rights Documentation Center. Web. 05 Apr. 2012 http://www.iranhrdc.org/english/publications/reports/3157-ctrl-alt-delete-iran-039-s-response-to-the-internet.html?p=36#.T6QYEJ9YveU.</ref> Yet the internet provided a new means for widespread readership which was, up until 2004, was mostly unregulated, providing an outlet for mostly youth to express themselves freely. In 2009, due to the contentious nature of the presidential elections, and the rise of the green party movement, internet crackdowns have become far more strict. Despite [https://bloggingcapital.com/what-is-blog/ 43% of the internet is using wordpress] to create blogs to express their thoughts on the internet, the Iranian government strictly controls the internet making it tough for anyone to express their view online.

Nonetheless, {{as of|2009|lc=y}}, according to the CIA world factbook, 8.214 million internet users in Iran, ranked 35th in the world.<ref>[https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/iran/ The World Factbook]</ref> Blogs range from updates on art and critiquing movies, to following injustices of political prisoners. Diasporic [[Persian language|Persian]] and Iranian blogs have also become a trend as a means to be part of an international online community. Blogs may be used as a virtual means of social protest without assembly, such as when thousands of bloggers renamed their blogs Akbar Ganji for a week in 2005, in support of the arrested critic of the regime. Hossien Derakhshan, the unofficial "godfather" of the blogosphere, set his up in Canada in September 2001. He was later arrested. In 2011, Iranian authorities executed more than 600 people and imprisoned more journalists and bloggers than any other country.<ref>Human rights watch https://www.hrw.org/news/2012/01/22/iran-authorities-defiant-rights-record</ref>