Following a crackdown on Iranian media beginning in 2000, many Iranians turned to weblogging to provide and find political news.[1] The first Persian language blog is thought to have been created by Hossein Derakhshan, (in Canada), in 2001. Derakhshan also provided readers with a simple instruction manual in Persian on how to start a blog.[2] In 2004, a census of blogs around the world by the NITLE found 64,000 Persian language blogs.[3] In that year the Islamic government also began to arrest and charge bloggers as political dissidents and by 2005 dozens of bloggers had been arrested.[1]