Over time, blogs have been seen and portrayed as a disruptive publishing technology, a medium for the independent voice, a platform for the little-guy, a tool that enables freedom of expression.

But today’s shock-blogging story emanates from research from the University of Washington which reports that 36 bloggers were arrested in 2007 around the world – three times as many as 2006.

As reported here, bloggers writing about political controversies in their countries have been arrested by governments for exposing corruption, reporting on the abuse of human rights, and blogging about political figures. The BBC notes that the actual number of blogger arrests could be far higher than this, as for many cases it’s hard to deduce if and why an arrest has taken place.

While the story demonstrates that blogs are feeding the democratisation of publishing, it also shows that there will always be those who want to maintain the old-school way of control, where information monopolies restrict the transparency and openness that the social media revolution has come to embody.

First written for Shiny Red.