The World Information Access Project reports that 64 citizen around the world unaffiliated with major media companies have been arrested for their blogging activities. Average jail time is 15 months. Some bloggers were jailed for as little as a few hours, while others were jailed for as long as eight years.

According to the report, the Middle East and Asia are the two areas with the most arrests. Egypt arrested 14 bloggers since 2003, China arrested 12 bloggers, and Iran arrested eight bloggers.

Most of the bloggers arrested are young-ish, varying in age from 21 to 45.

WIA used Lexis Nexis and Google News to accumulate their research. They only recorded stories reported in online media, which means that countless other arrested bloggers are not included in their research. This invisible group is, perhaps, the one that matters most — untrackable but sitting behind bars somewhere for the crime of posting something online.

Check out the analysis and charts and graphs.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 22nd, 2008 at 6:52 pm and is filed under Blogs, Censorship, Citizen Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.