A group of researchers studied the decline of “Blogestan,” the Iranian blogosphere:
Filtering hit Blogestan hard, modifying the diversity of voices within the Persian blogosphere. As one writer explained: “They showed me a stack of papers, each one a blog post that I had written, and they had highlighted portions and sections. After I was released, my blog in effect became my case file.” Reformist blogs are 17 times more likely to be filtered or removed than conservative blogs. In our sample, nearly half of the reformist blogs were filtered or removed in comparison to only 2.8 percent of conservative blogs. In addition, nearly all blogs hosted on the two popular platforms operating outside Iran, WordPress and Blogspot, are blocked. These conditions drove many prominent bloggers to alter or cease blogging, which transformed the blogging landscape. The closure of popular services such as BlogRolling and Google Reader disrupted the connections between bloggers. The loss of Google Reader was particularly significant because it had been a vital tool for circumventing the censorship of filtered blogs.
But there is another side to the story: The emergence of social networking sites (SNS) like Facebook is among the most important causes for the erosion of Blogestan. Just because blogs have declined does not mean that online public expression has withered alongside it.
The Dish 