WIA Report » Blogger Arrests: “Blogger Arrests

Unfortunately, one way to assess the political importance of blogging around the world is through the growing number of blogger arrests. Since 2003, 64 citizens unaffiliated with news organizations have been arrested for their blogging activities.

Using Google and LexisNexis as search engines, we found 64 blogger arrest incidents discussed in various news articles, blogs, scholarly articles and informational Web sites. We organized the incidents by blogger name, country, date of arrest, reason for arrest and time in jail. The majority of incidents took place in the Middle East and Asia with some in North America and Western Europe. We recorded only bloggers who were arrested for using electronic media, which included written online blogs, videos and text messages, to discuss or record political issues and events. The online texts we reviewed cited a variety of reasons for the arrests including refusal to give information to the government and violating rules unrelated to state security. Incidents involving pornography or sexual abuse were avoided with the exception of a few select incidents.”