7% of Bloggers in Middle East Arrested This Year

A Harvard Survey of 98 bloggers has revealed that 7% of bloggers in the Middle East have been arrested or detained in the past year alone. Furthermore, 30% say they have been threatened. The survey was conducted by Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, with funding from the State Department and the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, who are based in the UK.

The participants are anonymous. The composition included 81% who blogged in English, the rest being either Arabic or French. This implies that there were few bloggers from Iran, Turkey or Israel. The bloggers generally used Facebook, Twitter and Gmail.

Around 8% of those who took part used high security blogging and sites where the provider refuses to share information with governments. The Arab Spring has proved to be a particularly poor time to be a journalist or blogger.


http://www.fastcompany.com/1771520/survey-7-of-arab-bloggers-have-been-arrested