Back to the subject of blogging. The recent report from the Internet and Democracy Project at Harvard is well worth a look. As far as I know it’s the first detailed study of the Arab blogosphere.

The researchers found about 35,000 blogs in Arabic, which sounds a lot but when you consider the total population of the Arab countries it mean that roughly one person in every 10,000 is a blogger. The figure for non-Arab Iran, though, is much higher: about one in a thousand. This is a huge difference. I don’t know the explanation but I’d be interested to hear any theories.