Brisbane.
Bugger: the ANZCA 2009 programme incorrectly listed Brian McNair's keynote for 10 a.m. rather than 9 a.m., so I missed almost all of it - very, very frustrating. Hope someone else blogged it...
So, I'm now in the first panel session of this last conference day, and the first speaker in this session is Nazanin Ghanavizi, whose interest is in blogging in Iran - a very timely topic at this point, of course. She begins by noting that one of the most important factors of social life is being able to give voice to one's ideas. Iranian society is already highly active online, especially by blogging - Persian is a major blog language, with some one million blogs in Persian, even in spite of the comparatively small population of Persian-speakers worldwide.
Blogging is seen by many as contributing to a healthy democracy by providing voice to a wide range of citizens and helping to establish an informed citizenry. This is important in Iran as there is a lack of free speech and free press in the country; while there are limitations to Internet access here as well as in other countries, it is still much more easily possible for Iranians to voice their views through this medium than through others.
There is a possibility that this may contribute to the establishment of a more healthy public sphere, in a Habermasian definition (even in spite of the limitations of Habermas's theory as it applies to the Internet). Totalitarian states, by contrast, limit the public expression of alternative political views, in order to masquerade the state's policies as legitimate. Public opinion, on the other hand, enables the people to assess the legitimacy of the state.
Democratic theory requires closer scrutiny of the context in which citizens form public opinion and express their views. Public opinion arises from the views that are shared by citizens, and the Net provides citizens with new environments in which public issues may be debated and new policy ideas may be formulated. If utilised appropriately, this can intensify the relationship between citizens and the state, and between citizens themselves. Citizens in this context are acting as produsers of information, Nazanin says.
The Net has provided the Iranian public with a space of alternate voices, and this spaces was activated in the protests following the declaration of the falsified results of the Iranian presidential election, as the large scale of the public protests has shown. This demonstrates that in the age of digital communication, it is almost impossible for governments to shut out citizens from public debate and deliberation - and quite obviously, there is strong participation from Iranians both inside and outside the country.
