Monday, September 24, 2007

Blogging for Iran

Hossein Derakhshan is a blogger whose blogs are becoming a main source of press in Iran along with many others. Derakhshan is from Canada and his blog hoder.com is responsible for Persian and Iranian blogs popping up. This is giving those people a chance to speak their minds, and understand others on web logs. Unfortunately, these blogs are monitored and filtered by the Iranian government who feel that they are power is being challenged by these people. I chose this blog because it is a prime example of how important freedom of speech is and how much speech is limited around the world. It is not acceptable for a common person in Iran to have a blog but it is crucial for presidential candidates to ensure his popularity. The posts on this web log are news based, they are the information the public needs to know about, and they are quick, exact facts. His writing style is quick and to the point, the posts are information packed, political, and worldly. I think that this blog is less scary and intimidating to the government of Iran that MacKinnon portrayed it to be and it is more and more informative to the people reading the blog as to what is going on in the world as a whole not just in Iran. It is close to what I thought it to be, it is more information and fact based then speaking the mind then I anticipated after reading “Making Global Voices Heard: An Interview with Rebecca MacKinnon” but it is still for the Persian people of Iran as well as now being for others who speak either English or Persian. Of course, many will probably disagree with this assertion that this blog and blogs in general are a way for one to be able to speak freely and give and receive information on events and facts going on in the world however this assertion is not going to change my mind on this blog and other blogs ability to reach people through free words.

1 comment:

Tracy Mendham said...

Yes, bloggers like Hoder remind us that free speech is precious and worth fighting for... your post gives me a good sense of Derakshan's web log. Some sentences toward the end of the post are little unwieldy--try reading out loud to catch the awkward bits.