Iran Election a Twitter Revolution?

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

Jun 18, 2009 By John Cole, The Scranton Times-Tribune

Iran's government is being outwited by tech savy citizens. Twitter has kept the doors of communication open.

Iran Elections: A Twitter Revolution?Blogger, Foreign Policy Magazine and Fellow, Open Society Institute
Wednesday, June 17, 2009


An Iranian girl looks back as supporters of reformist candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi fight
running battles using stones and petrol bombs against police, as they protest the results
of the Iranian presidential election in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, June 13, 2009. Police tried
to suppress demonstrators who took to the streets to protest the declared results of
recent presidential elections. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis) (Ben Curtis - AP)

Evgeny Morozov, blogger for Foreign Policy magazine and a fellow with Open Society Institute, was online Wednesday, June 17, at 3 p.m. ET to discuss the role of Twitter and other social-networking services and Web sites in coverage of the Iranian elections.

The State Department asked social-networking site Twitter to delay scheduled maintenance earlier this week to avoid disrupting communications among tech-savvy Iranian citizens as they took to the streets to protest Friday's reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The move illustrates the growing influence of online social-networking services as a communications media. Foreign news coverage of the unfolding drama, meanwhile, was limited by Iranian government restrictions barring journalists from "unauthorized" demonstrations.

State Department Talks to Twitter but It Should REALLY Be Talking to U.S. Treasury (Foreign Policy, June 16)

In an e-mail interview with washingtonpost.com Morozov said, "it has been of great help in terms of getting information out of the country. Whether it has helped to organize protests -- something that most of the media are claiming at the moment -- is not at all certain, for, as a public platform, Twitter is not particularly helpful for planning a revolution (authorities could be reading those messages as well!). However, in terms of involving the huge Iranian diaspora and everyone else with a grudge against Ahmadinejad, it has been very successful. Inevitably, there have been negative effects as well -- for example, several campaigns to organize cyber-attacks on pro-government Web sites have been publicized via Twitter, which I think shows that there is also a very dark side to new media that is yet to be explored."

Support Iranian protestors - Help cover the Iranian Tweeters: Boing Boing

change your twitter settings so that your location is TEHRAN and your time zone is GMT +3.30. Security forces are hunting for bloggers using location and timezone searches. If we all become 'Iranians' it becomes much harder to find them

Get a Free Iran or Iran Twitter Bird icon here



Join Twitter

[Warpy]

1. Twitter has done a couple of things

It's allowed communication within the country and allowed the news to get out of the country. Other sites, like YouTube and other video hosting sites along with Facebook are also being used to get the news out.

The cartoon is great.

However, the real story is the people on the ground, marching, over a million at a time, telling the government they've had enough and some changes have to be made, occasionally getting shot and beaten in the process.

Calling this a "Twitter revolution" is demeaning to the people out there who are putting their asses on the line in civil disobedience.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

2. No its not demeaning to the Iranian people. Not at all.

Anyone who checks out Twitter throughout the day can see that #IranElection
is very important to those on the ground there.

NO ONE IS SAYING THAT THIS REVOLUTION IS NOT DUE TO THE IRANIAN PEOPLE.

What IS degrading is that you bring your pissy attitude from the Health Forum over
here to the Election Reform forum.

You may have a click over in the Health Forum that makes it easy for you to piss in
people's cherios each day, but you won't find that here in the Election Reform forum.

What IS important is to do everything to get the word out and the news out for the
brave hearted people of Iran.