Caracas Chronicles

Iran has an estimated three million to seven million Internet users, the most in the Middle East. Between 65,000 and 100,000 Iranians post blogs, many of them evading government filters by jumping from server to server. In 2004, however, the hard-liners began cracking down on Internet dissent, using both filtering technology and old-fashioned harassment. By October, twenty-one Iranians were imprisoned in connection with blogs. Most were technical administrators of Web sites, but seven were political writers.

Though it ranks 28th in number of overall-speakers, Farsi is the second most often-used language for blogging, after English.

Much more on the Persian blogosphere…