Hossein “Hoder” Derakhshan is an Iranian-born blogger, journalist, and internet activist. Since mid-90s, he has been advocating the use of internet, particularly as a means for social and political change in Iran.
His award-winning weblog, “Editor: Myself” (http://hoder.com/weblog), which was started in Sep 2001, has been among the most influential blogs in Persian language and his step-by-step instruction to create blogs in Persian should take much of the credit for inspiring thousands of Iranians to start their own blogs.
Hossein, whom The Guardian called a “key link from Iran's teeming world of Weblogs to the west”, has been living in Toronto since Dec 2000 where he updates his Persian blog (http://i.hoder.com) and English blog (http://hoder.com/weblog) blogs, stop.censoring.us (http://stop.censoring.us), and his photoblog (http://vagrantly.com), all available at hoder.com (http://hoder.com).
He is also the founder and director of Rear Window Initiative (http://rearwindowinitiative.org), a program to promotes democracy and peace in Iran through the internet.
Latest posts by Hossein Derakhshan
Grand Ayatollah Reads Blogs
Last week something extraordinary happened in the Persian blogging community. Mohammad Abtahi, a former vice-president of Iran and an enthusiastic blogger was visiting the eighty-something dissident Grand Ayatollah Montazeri in Qom, a religious city south of Tehran. “How is Mr Abtahi's blog doing,” the Grand Ayatollah jokingly asks during a...
Banned Iranian Reporter Turns to Weblogs
Iranian regime is the best promoter of weblogs. The latest example is Massih (Masoumeh) Alinejad, the parliament correspondent for reformist newspapers who was banned from the parliament building last week because of the troubles she had made for hardliner MPs. It took 80 signs to oust her who had revealed...
Iranian weblogs growing up
Amazing things are happening in Iranian blogs these days. Now I'm seeing what I was expecting in terms of my third metaphor, blogs as cafes, where a unique, interactive space for public political debate has been created. First example is about the behind the scenes of the reformist candidate's campaign...
Wiki for participants
You can now use Global Voices wiki page to register your name and blog, so we all can keep in touch after the conference.
Academic paper on Persian blogging
Alireza Doostdar, an Iranian Harvard gruadute student, has published his interesting paper in American Anthropologist, entitled “ “The Vulgar Spirit of Blogging”: On Language, Culture, and Power in Persian Weblogestan.” It's one of the few academic papers on blogs in Iran.
