New Media and The Middle East – Challenging Authority in Iran

This is another installment in my series of posts on examples of ways new media are being used to challenge authority in the Middle East. This post will focus on Iran.

Internet access in Iran has seen a particular explosion, growing faster than any other Middle Eastern country, according to Reporters Without Borders.  ”From 2000 to 2007,” reported Sepideh Parsa, “the number of users grew from 250,000 to 18 million, which accounts for 53.7% of users in the region”.

Within this explosion has been the rise of blogging in Iran, with the blogosphere becoming such a phenomenon as to warrant its current nickname, “Weblogistan”.  This rise in blogging is having political ramifications for the Iranian State.  “Blogs have become an essential medium for dissidence against the autocratic regime and its state-controlled media”, said Parsa.  “Iran has one of the strictest censorship policies in the Middle East. Thus, blogs offer Iranians the only platform to peacefully exchange their political thought, emotions, and opinions while overcoming the boundaries that have been imposed by the government”.

New Media and The Middle East – Challenging Authority in Egypt

New media, especially social media, are playing a significant role in challenging authority and states in the Middle East. This is the first post in a series I will publish on examples of how new media are being used toward this end. Egypt will start off this series.

Egyptians have begun using online social-networking tools like blogs, Facebook, and YouTube as tools of dissent against the existing authority.  This is significant given that the reigning president, Hosni Mubarak, is seen as a dictator—in fact, one of the world’s ten worst dictators—and his reign has been marked by human rights abuses and acts against freedom of expression that have warranted calling him one.

Bit Torrent Technology As a Tool for Change

With all of the legal troubles that bit torrent websites like The Pirate Bay have been having over the filesharing services they provide that enable countless (millions? billions?) copies of licensed digital products to go unpaid for, it seems that bit torrent technology itself is accruing a pretty bad image. Understably so, at least to those who don’t pirate digital intellectual property. However, in all of this publicity over this technology as a vehicle for stealing, I’m concerned we might not see the good this technology could do.

Whenever I come across anything that involves potentially spreading information in a way that transfers knowledge from being concentrated into the hands of a few to the hands of many, I can’t help but think of the Information Divide and the implications for international development. So, naturally I think about this when I think about bit torrent technology. I personally feel that digital piracy that causes intellectual property holders like filmmakers, musicians, and programmers to lose money is merely one aspect to this technology. But what about the development aspects?