The Internet and Voice of the People?

Check this out for substantial dicussion on the growing importance for government and corporate control of the Internet. There are several links leading on to other relevant papers as well.

UPDATED:
But how are blogs significant to the Middle East? Well, for one:

Jeff Jarvis is a big advocate of the power of the blog, particularly in the Middle Eastern countries yearning for freedom. He has championed the Iranian blogger Hoder (see Iran links on right) and is now encouraging a new Iraqi blogger, Zeyad and his blog Healing Iraq (see Iraq links on right). At a time when we are all increasingly aware that media sources matter, Jarvis claims that, in Zeyad's blog "You'll find reporting of a witness and a citizen that is beyond anything an outside reporter can possibly give you."

In a later blog, Jarvis reports that he introduced Hoder and Zeyad, in order that they might help each other share their stories to us. Jarvis ends his blog by quoting another blogger (Harry) to show the significance of blogs in the autocratic Middle Eastern countries: "We might shrug our shoulders at our ability to be able to instantly publish our thoughts but for people who have spent their lives living under dictatorships, media like weblogs truly are liberating."

I agree with Jarvis, this passage from one of Zeyad's blogs is quite remarkable:

"The following days were awful. The lawless and chaotic phase was next. I couldn't stand to go out and watch those ignorants stealing everything they could and literally destroying public buildings. What would the world think of us now? Some of the strangest things I witnessed, a pickup truck filled with school desks, the desks that their children use. A child dragging a Canon laser printer on the floor. Computers, hundreds of them loaded on carts pulled by donkeys. Police and army vehicles. And most important of all weapons, kalashnikovs, RPG's, hand grenades, stockpiles of ammunition. I wanted to bury my head in dirt. I hated myself for being an Iraqi, for sharing the same nationality with those strange people. I was deeply ashamed, watching this helplessly. People consciously destroying their own infrastructure, people setting fire to buildings we are proud of, stealing their history from museums, burning their public libraries. They are not Iraqis, they are aliens from Mars. I just couldn't take it. I cried, I admit it. I didn't know who to blame. I NEEDED someone to blame. I couldn't possibly blame the Americans, after all it isn't THEIR country, it's ours. We were the ones destroying ourselves. We are a self-destructive people. It only took me now to realize that. It wasn't Saddam that was the problem, it wasn't the Ba'ath, it wasn't the Ottoman empire, it wasn't the monarchy, it wasn't colonialism, it wasn't anything. It was us. We simply destroyed Iraq, and now we are sitting and wailing because the Americans aren't rebuilding it for us."

UPDATE
For a more particular listing of articles and such on the impact (hopeful and real) of blogs on the unraveling Iranian Revolution see Hoder's website (see his list on the right of his site). This piece is a good place to begin.