Imagined Cyber Communities, Iranians and the Internet
Haleh Nazeri, New York University

The post information age will remove the limitations of geography.
–Nicholas Negroponte, Being Digital

THE INTERNET has been a continually changing forum for communicating that has been taken up by diaspora communities to maintain connections with their countrymates all over the world. In that capacity, the technology has been an easy and innovative avenue for cultural expression. Iranians, for instance, have established on-line magazines, newsgroups, media and business directories, human rights organizations, student groups, academic organizations and book publishers for a transnational community. Who goes to these sites and why?

Last Spring, I put these questions to the mailing list of an on-line magazine, The Iranian. Iranians are on-line from Australia to the US to Canada to Iran itself. The majority are in North America, which could be related to the affluent and educated demographics of Iranian immigrants in the United States. Half of Persians 25 and older living in the US have BAs or higher degrees, and the median household income of Iranians ($36,000) ranked fifth in the United States, ahead of native-born Americans ($30,000).¹ But for the larger community of Iranians on the Internet, one of its main attractions is that it is an anonymous avenue of communication and free speech.

It is a liberating idea to have an uncensorable avenue of free speech for many Iranians stifled by the Islamic Republic in Iran or frightened by the censors once outside Iran. Some groups of Middle Easterners are using the Internet to discuss taboo topics that would be difficult to discuss without the anonymity that this medium provides. For example, a popular Web page among the Arab sites is one for gay Arabs. A recent survey in an Iranian newsgroup regarding female virginity asked: “How many of you vote yes or no for virginity.” “These conditions lead to the expression of ideas that would rarely be expressed in face to face relationships.”² That is, people use the Internet to create protected and private environments of discussion that Internet theorists call “virtual communities.”³ The mere ability to discuss issues like politics, sex and breaking traditions creates an open channel for networking and communication that most other resources can’t match. How the deluge of information and networking on-line crosses over to non-electronic venues can be seen in some current electronic network projects.

Virtual Community Networks

Iranian Internet sites range across topics from the media to geography to art to religion to poetry, with new sites appearing almost daily. The most popular and frequented appear to be cultural and do not proclaim any religious affiliation. Indeed, some of the more popular sites seem to frown on anything having to do with Islam, choosing instead to focus on Iran's culture and the tensions of diaspora life for Iranians. I discuss a few of the principal ones here.

The Iranian was (http://www.iranian.com), created September 1995, is one of the few organized as a magazine. Subscribers to its mailing list receive daily announcements of conferences, art exhibits, new World Wide Web sites and a variety of other messages having to do with Iranians all over the world. Almost 35,000 people have visited the site since its inception last year. Its publisher, Jahanshah Javid, reports that The Iranian, which has 80% of its articles in English and the rest in Persian, has no religious or political agenda or affiliation. It offers articles on politics, culture, art and the quandaries of dealing with dual identities. Javid said he started an on-line magazine because he couldn’t afford a printed one. “I think every culture that has been dispersed by politics and revolution wants to keep in touch somehow,” he said. “Maybe in 20 or 30 years they won't feel that need as much, but for now I think we fill a missing space.”

Soroush (http://www.soroush.com/) started in March of 1995 as an “interactive network” and currently has about a thousand subscribers. There are chats, polls, bacgammon, chess and other games; and newsgroup forums about poetry, music, debates, jokes, news and science. System Operator Mahmoud Nezaam Shahbodaghi said Soroush aims to provide a place for Iranians to gather with the option to join, or start, interest groups and to foster a sense of community and cooperation. “It is hoped that this will lead to unity and prosperity. The rules are: no hatred, no obscenity and no violence,"” said Shahbodaghi. “We [Iranians] have never had such an opportunity to interact individual to individual over such a wide domain.”

PersiaNet (http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~sebrahl/PersiaNet.html) began in May 1995 as a listing of Iran-related World Wide Web sites. The table of contents ranges from the current time and weather to government documents to the Persian Yellow Pages in Atlanta. It also has a whole section called Project Arian, about an eleven-year-old girl who has leukemia and is waiting for a bone marrow transplant. The section has news articles about the girl, cancer information links, how to donate money to Project Arian as well as the latest update on her condition.

The Iranian Cultural and Information Center (http://tehran.stanford.edu/) has been called the “mother of all web sites” for Iranian topics. It has subsections for culture, a Persian Yellow Pages, sports, Persian literature, Iranian movie titles, schools, conferences and Persian food recipes.

IranNet (http://irannet.com/) began in August 1995 to “provide information on a variety of topics that are of interest to the Iranian community and Iranian businesses worldwide.” One aim is to promote the presence of Iranian culture and Iranian business on the Internet, through their “Yellow Pages,” which provides two types of services for Iranian owned business with full featured homepage design and setup on the Internet. Also within IranNet is an Iranian Sports Homepage with highlights, interviews and trivia. It has 21 different sports icons and information on each sport.

There is also a site in Iran called Iran Net (http://aria.nic.ir/), which is operated by the Institute for Studies in Theoretical Physics and Mathematics in Iran (gopher://physics.ipm.ac.ir:aria.nic.ir/) and is the national academic network (discussed below).

Zan (http://www.zan.org/) describs itself as “an interactive Directory/Anthology of the arts and ideas of Iranian women, free from any political or religious affiliations.” The creator of the site, Roya, says that Iranian women regularly correspond with her regarding publishing their work or to find out information about other women. “I wanted Iranian women living in Diaspora locations to network directly with the women living in Iran and the Internet is the tool,” she said. Roya said that the site isn’t only for women, and that many men have also been corresponding with her.

A Usenet newsgroup called soc.culture.iranian features discussions on different topics that people can comment on from news stories to debates on “Are women treated in Islam worse than any other religion” to topics like “Monarchists and Iranians?” The comments on this site can get nasty, provocative and downright offensive sometimes. Some participants responded to my survey that they would like to see fewer sites like soc.culture.iranian on the Internet, complaining about the overabundance of politics on the Net. However, the conversations on this site stretch the limits of freedom of speech on almost every topic.

Iranians using the Internet

My survey circulated for about two weeks, with many respondents voluntarily forwarding it to other Iranians. Of 78 respondents, 65.4% identified themselves as men and 34.6% as women. 54% said they considered themselves part of an Iranian Internet community, and over half said they visit Iranian sites on the Internet. 30.8% said they only visit Iranian sites; 28.2% said they visit both Iranian and non-Iranian sites. A third said they do not visit any Iranian sites at all (which is strange considering that I either found their names on one of the Iranian sites or they were signed up on the The Iranian's mailing list). That I reached these people and they responded, negatively or positively, leads me to believer there is an Iranian Internet community.

A majority, 69%, lived in the United States, 25.6% of them in California. 10% of the respondents were in Canada and the UK and 10% in the rest of the world from Australia to Norway. 4% had never been to Iran. One young woman, who was born in the US to an Iranian father wrote, “I am just a person who wants to know more about my culture and what the people are like from where my father is from. Since I did not grow up with my father around I have turned to the Iranians on the Internet to teach me about their culture.”

They were young: 46% in their 30s, 32% in their 20s. Approximately 9% were in their teens or 40s. Occupationally, 37% were students, from high school to PhD level. 22% were in computer related jobs, while engineers comprised 10.3% of the respondents. Research positions and writing/publishing jobs each comprised 6.4%, while doctors, professors, management and secretarial positions each totaled about 4% of the respondents. I did a yearly breakdown of when the respondents left Iran. The two largest migrations happened in 1978 (12.8%) and 1984 (11.5%). Over one quarter left in 1978-1980, but the rest of the numbers were scattered.

Almost half, 48.8%, said they were Muslim, while 38.5% responded with no religious affiliation. Christians, Jews and Buddhists each comprised about 2.6% of the survey, with Bahais, Baptists and a mix of Muslim/Bahai rounding out the remainder.

A majority logged onto their computers either from work or both work and home. (Since students comprised such a large number of the respondents’ occupations, I counted school as work.) 43.6% said they log in at work. 42% both home and work. 14.1% said they log on to their computers only at home. 27% said they log on once a day, 22% said twice and 11.5% said they are on the Net all day. Over 20% said they were on the Internet for one hour a day, another 15.4% said they were on all day. About 10% each said they are on line half an hour, two hours or three hours a day, while over half the respondents gave other answers. The most interesting responses I got were to the question, “How do you define the Internet community?” Some loved it, some hated it, and many just said they didn’t have time to answer. The responses ranged over:

• A large global clan with its own distinctive tribes and their affection and disaffection of each other.
• People from all over the world finding common interests and either speaking about them, or learning more about them.
• People wasting their time on the Internet and clogging the networks and not letting me do my work.
• A global community exchanging information electronically. Very unique, with an insignificant exception, I have found the members of the Internet community to be humane, extremely helpful, friendly and generous in providing valuable information to fellow members without any financial expectations.
• It's all my life, in my lonely days in the US. I found my best friends, even in Iran, even my old friends in Iran.
• Well educated, computer savvy, and mostly male.
• Incoherent and schizophrenic. I think the name Internet community is an oxymoron.

These people go to the Internet for friendship, identity and reassurance that there are other Iranians who are interested in similar things and who do not want to let go of their culture or their country.

The single most commented-on topic was the amount of political discourse on the Internet for and against the Islamic Republic. Almost 25% said they would like to see less political commentary and closed-mindedness on the different sites. Objectionable were “bashing each other and trying to convince others that one’s ideology is the only correct one,” or “arguments and hatred and hurting each other.” One wished for “Less confrontation like in the sci newsgroup.” A majority asked for more openness to other points of view. One person said he wanted, “more cooperative and friendly attitude towards each other ... solidarity in attempting to restore the Iranian dignity to neutralize the existing unfavorable reputation on a worldwide basis.” Another wanted Iranians to let go of history, asking that “Iranians ... move beyond the revolution, have fun and accept that WE are Iranian and American and we are okay. We don’t all have to be virgins, Republicans, sedate and dull. Let’s move on...”

The irony in these comments is that most of today's Iranian diaspora left because of politics, and politics, especially the revolution, is still a main topic of conversation even in Iran. When social discussions turn political in America, there will usually be someone who stops it. The same thing seems to happen on the Internet: we know our country is in turmoil, we know the revolution did more harm than good, but we also know the current government will not be overthrown with conversations from abroad. It is a strange position to be in.

Internet in Iran

Within Iran, the picture is less developed. The first Internet provider for Iran was the Institute for Studies in Theoretical Physics and Mathematics (IPM) (gopher://physics.ipm.ac.ir:aria.nic.ir/), which started operating almost five years ago. On their Web page (http://aria.nic.ir/), IPM claims that academic Internet access is available to all universities, and they list eight universities with Internet access in Iran. Other research centers have e-mail access via AT&T mail or SprintNET. Commercial Internet access is available through four different companies: Neda Rayaneh Corporation, Data Communication Company of Iran, Virayeshgar Corporation and Pars Supaleh.

In a recent article in The Iranian on the Internet in Iran, Payman Arabshahi, a faculty member in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Washington, concluded from his survey of the different Internet providers in the country that “What is clear is that the Internet is expanding very rapidly in the country, despite the various problems, and past and present strategies. The government appears to be supportive of the effort, and no matter what happens, it is hard to imagine an Iran in the future without Internet access, at the very least for Universities, research centers and major industries.”⁴ An estimated 60,000 people have in one way or another used Internet services provided through IPM or other providers in Iran.⁵ The four commercial providers have varying charges ranging anywhere from annual individual accounts costing approximately $100 to one-time registration fees of $48 and a $0.52 charge for each mail sent or received.⁶ Service via a few slow 9600 baud links is not stopping them from taking advantage of the vast space of communicating available with modern technology.

Conclusion

Nicholas Negroponte's vision of Internet-mediated, post-geographical community seems right about diasporas, but only half right.⁷ It might lead to closer community among Iranians in the United States or to closing their gaps with the US. A recent daily bulletin posted on The Iranian's mailing list regarded passing legislation to promote a national Iranian Heritage Day in the US for the Iranian New Year. Many use the Internet to obtain current details about events in Iran that are not yet available through other sources. Information on Dr. Abdol Karim Soroush, a controversial scholar in the Islamic Republic, is available at http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/parade/ac889/, which contains a biography of Dr. Soroush, western press reports on him and academic papers on his ideas. The Internet could also be used to look up, for instance, the exact ingredients in Ghormeh Sabzi or how the Iranian Olympic Wrestling team performed this year. These are all issues that interest a community dispersed throughout the world.

The bigger issues now might be where else this technology comes back to earth. Can the open and lively exchange that is occurring in some of the newsgroups be transferred into real time? Can this dialogue be picked up outside of the Internet by people who don't have the resources to get on-line and be developed into a social agenda for Iranians in the diaspora? Is this simply a cultural exchange forum, or can political action be organized on-line and thousands of miles from the source?

Notes

¹Mehdi Bozorgmer. “Diaspora in the Postrevolutionary Period.” Encyclopedia Iranica: 382. Vol. 7.

²Maboud Ansari. The Making of the Iranian Community in America: 140. New York: Pardis Press, 1992.

³Howard Rheingold. The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing, 1994.

⁴Payman Arabshahi. “Internet in Iran-A Survey.” The Iranian on-line magazine.

⁵Siavash Shahshahani. “The Center and the Network” (in Persian), IPM Newsletter, Vol. 4, No. 3, Fall 1995. Sourced from the Arabshahi article.

⁶Payman Arabshahi. “Internet in Iran–A Survey.”

⁷Nicholas Negroponte. Being Digital. New York: Free Press, 1995.

Appendix: Some Additional Iranian Sites on the Internet

(Abridged from a longer list that can be found at The Iranian WWW site, http://www.iranian.com)

Cinema 96, English magazine from Los Angeles http://www.denafilms.com:80/cinema/

Hamshahri (Fellow Citizen), Persian daily from Tehran http://gpg.com/hamshahri/

Iran Business Digest, English newsletter from Tehran http://www.neda.net/ibd/

“Iran-e Man” (My Iran), TV production company in Portland, Oregon. http://www.teleport.com/~iraneman/

Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) http://netiran.com/news/irnafile.html

Iranian sports homepage http://www.sportestan.com

Amnesty International’s report on Iran, 1995 http://www.io.org/amnesty/Mideast95/130295.MDE.txt

Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran in English http://www.algonet.se/farhad/consUconst.htm

Iran, CIA’s unclassified general report http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/95fact/ir.html

Iranian Carpet Museum (very large image sizes) http://www.ncl.ac.uk/-n270556/car/carindex.html

Twenty paintings by 20 Iranian women http:iranian.com/Mar96/Arts/AliveKicking.html

Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh in English http://www.cit.ics.saitama-u.ac.jp/hobbies/iran/shahnameh.html

Khayyam'’ Rubaiyat in English http://www.cit.ics.saitama-u.ac.jp/hobbies/iran/khayyam.html

Mage Publishers http://www.mage.com/

Mazda Publications http://www.mazdapub.com/

Khayyam Persian calendar conversion at Payvand http://www.payvand.com:80/calendar/

IranTravel http://www.irantravel.com

Iran provinces. Facts and figures http://www.cwi.nl/~keesh/Iran/geography.html

Iranian music sites

http://www.iranian.com/mar96/Web/Music.html

http://gpg.com/radio/index.html

http://www.kereshmeh.com/

http://www.xdot25.com/

http://www.galcit.caltech.edu/~moh/music.html

Iran Alumni Club, based in US http://www.neda.com:80/IranAlumni/

Ed. Note:
Some additional Iranian sites mentioned in earlier issues of the MESA Bulletin:

• Iranian Scholars Scientific Information Network (http://www.staff.uiuc.edu/~manssour/)
• Informatics Society of Iran (http://tehran.stanford.edu/Iran_Lib/ISI/isi.html)
• Computer Society of Iran (http://www.neda.com:80/IranAlumni/csi.html)