Masserat Amir-Ebrahimi has an essay, Performance in Everyday Life and the Rediscovery of the "Self" in Iranian Weblogs, which argues that the general practice of blogging in the specific situation of Iran enables certain forms of self-presentation, criticism, and alterative media production. Such blogging creates an accumulative sense of identity, archive narratives of the self, as well as a different form of self-censorship, still subject to gendered difference.
Through the continuous practice of writing, individuals can assert layers of their personality that they were hitherto unable to in real life. It is a new public space which has more qualitative than quantitative importance for Iranians.
Excellent work, cutting across the usual tropes of blog discussion, and very much worth reading.
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