Publicly Intimate Online: Iranian Web Logs in Southern California

ranian identities are increasingly being articulated through the Internet, especially through online sites for refl ective narration and discussion called Web logs, or blogs.1 On these publicly displayed, often anonymous Web pages, individuals record their personal experiences, thoughts, anecdotes, and opinions. Blogs are emerging as an analytic site for the examination of emergent forms of technoor cybersociality and, more generally, constitute a space for studying the relationship between new technological emergences and expressions of affect.2 Within the frame of cyberculture as a regime, technosociality can be understood through its productive features, that is, the practices, values, rituals, and social relations it fosters.3 As an emerging fi eld for social action, cyberspace is constantly in process and changing, challenging the stability of concepts of the self, intimacy, identity, and community.4 This article is concerned with the ways technology itself shapes specifi c forms