Babelmachine

Iran election protests harness power of Twitter, New Media

Jun 16, 2009 06:54

UPDATE: Twitter has announced that its network maintenance has been rescheduled as its "network partners at NTT America recognize the role Twitter is currently playing as an important communication tool in Iran".

With mainstream media over the weekend failing to satisfy the hunger for news on the protests against the Iran election results and subsequent government crackdown, it was New Media which once more came to the rescue.

Twitter has become a vital tool not only for people around the world to know what's happening inside Iran--the hashtag #IranElection is the number one Trending Topic on Twitter as of this writing--but has been harnessed by the Iranian protesters themselves. Now Twitter users are lobbying via the hashtag #NoMaintenance to convince the microblogging site to postpone its scheduled maintenance.

As my fellow CNET Asia blogger Geekonomics wrote, the hashtag #CNNFail became a popular meme on Twitter due to the dissatisfaction of users with its lack of coverage during the start of the Iran protests. With Old Media apparently distracted by other "news stories", Twitter and the blogosphere picked up the slack, including the live blog of the Iran election protests over at The Huffington Post and Andrew Sullivan's blog.

Iranians are now using proxy servers in order to circumvent the media crackdown and keep information flowing.

Here's an example of a blog post with a supposed appeal from a user in Iran asking for proxy services.

Could you please ask your readers, the ones which are technically capable to set up proxy services for IP ranges inside Iran? These addresses can be sent to some of the people who are using facebook/twitter from Iran. All mobile phones are down and this is the only means of communication from Iran.

It would also be helpful if you could post the proxy information on twitter under #iranelection with the word proxy in your tweet.

YouTube is now featuring videos of the Iran protests on its homepage. Here's an example of one of the videos it's showcasing.



As I blogged previously when I wrote about how Filipino Netizens are using Twitter and New Media to protest the moves to amend the Philippine Constitution, the true test of digital tools is when they are used by citizens to defend democracy and keep information flowing.

The Iran election protests are a testament to how vital these online tools are, and what role ordinary citizens will play as they learn to empower themselves. It's also showing us the future of media--and the future has been happening for the past few years. We are increasingly part of a media landscape where it will not just be a few organizations such as CNN telling us what the news is, but ordinary users deciding for themselves what's newsworthy, and creating and choosing their own news.

It's all about more people asking: "Who's in control?" For Governments who rely on controlling people against their will, that's bad news, indeed.

Recent Comments

 

Most Discussed

 

Browse Archive