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A glimpse into the Persian blogosphere

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Persian language bloggers, both inside and outside the country, have been weighing in on the day’s events in Tehran. Those bloggers are the subject of some new research carried out by The BBC World Service Trust and a Persian social media website called Balatarin. Marco Werman hears more from The World’s technology correspondent Clark Boyd.

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MARCO WERMAN: Persian language bloggers, both inside and outside Iran, have been weighing in on the days events in Tehran. Those bloggers are the focus of new research by the BBC World Service Trust and a Persian-language website called Balatarin. Our technology correspondent Clark Boyd has been speaking with the people behind the research. And Clark you’ve reported quite a bit on the so-called Iranian blogosphere over the past five years. Anything new and interesting here?

CLARK BOYD: Well I think one of the interesting things for me that it does is reinforce a breakdown of stereotypes. I think in the west especially we tend to get caught up in oh it’s a Persian-language blogger. It’s a blog about Iran. It must be about politics. It must be about nuclear weapons. It must be about US-Iranian relations or something like that. And what this research has really shown in collating a wide number of Persian-language blogs is that by and large Persian-language bloggers are blogging about a lot of the same things that we blog about. Sure some of it may be political but some of it may have to do with what they fed their cat yesterday. One of the interesting things though is that they noted that there were a lot of blogs about poetry and about literature. Now that’s not so strange.

WERMAN: Strong tradition there.

BOYD: Very strong tradition there. But what’s interesting is how the language in those blogs is being used. We can hear now from Mehdi Yayanajad who is the director of this website called Balatarin.

MEHDI YAYANAJAD: They are using poetry language to kind of show what is going on and what’s wrong with politics, what’s wrong with economy. But they are using poetry language because it’s safer to use that. It’s not direct and poetry language helps them to say things that they can’t say normally.

WERMAN: So Clark these bloggers are hiding from the sensors by creating blogs that are ostensibly about poetry but seemingly about politics underneath?

BOYD: Yes and no. Again I think there are political messages that seem to be embedded in the language of these blogs but at the same time they’re also celebrating the Persian language itself. And like we said before there’s actually a very long tradition in Iran not only of using poetic language but using that poetic language in service of politics. So in that sense they’re just using one of the tools that readily available to them to make their statements.

WERMAN: So what other things did the BBC World Service Trust research unearth?

BOYD: Well another interesting thing they noted is this rise of the conservative Persian blogosphere. And I think that what we’re seeing here is concerted effort on the part of the authorities in Iran to get more people who agree with them blogging about it. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad himself has a blog. He hasn’t updated it for a long time but he does have a blog. So you’re seeing this rise of conservative blogging. And of course Iran is famous for being a regime that really knows how to play defense right. I mean they really know how to keep information out. They’re very good at filtering the net. But what we’re seeing now that they seem to be actually be going on the offensive here and recruiting people to go out and blog their side of things.

WERMAN: And the World Service is also behind this Persian-language website aggregating all this Persian-language content. What’s the end result do they hope?

BOYD: What they really want it to be is a service. There’s no overt political goal here according the people that I spoke to about it. They really just want it to be a service. A resource for Persian speakers. And eventually what they would like is to get a team of volunteers together who would help translate all of this Persian-language material into English. I’m sure it would make absolutely fascinating reading for us.

WERMAN: Well we’ll stay on top of this. I’m sure you will. The World’s Clark Boyd. Always a pleasure. Thanks.

BOYD: You’re welcome.

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