After the re-election of the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, protests scattered all over Iran. A lot of journalists and observers perceived this development as one founded on the Internet, and especially the social media Twitter – hence the name – “The twitter Revolution.” The name was based on a general perception that a lot of social media, Facebook, Youtube and especially Twitter had established a communication base for sharing information and news internally in Iran, which lay the bricks for mobilizing and organising the many protests and rallies, but also externally in communicating with the rest of the world.
On all fronts and platforms the Iranian government has tried to stop the protests, in the classical sense with physical power and brutality against the protesters and participants in the demonstrations and in the more modern technological sense by blocking specific Internet sites, mobile phone services and other communication tools. Furthermore the government are sweeping the Internet to punish propagandists agitating for a free Iran and for dissolution of the Iranian regime.
In this context Youtube, Twitter and Facebook and uploading pictures, movies and comments on these pages have been a way to communicate from the repressive republic of Iran, to the rest of the world. In this context the social media and the Internet have brought information from rallies and protests in Iran, which normal journalists was not able to cover. During this revolution the Iranian users of Twitter, Facebook and Youtube became the journalists or the “gatekeepers” who reported back to the rest of the world and thereby contributed to illuminating and educating the surrounding world.
But if the revolution is a specific “Twitter Revolution,” is an ambiguous question. One cannot neglect that some of the communication internally in Iran was based on mobilization through these pages. But a numerous couple of journalists and experts claim that the “Twitter Revolution” is a misleading term. Among them is author and journalist Reese Erlich, who after a visit in Iran as a freelance journalist discussed the term on an American news station.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFGSplRR7oI
The Iranian internet-expert Mahmoud Enayat supports this view. Both of them stresses out that social media, such as Twitter, wasn’t the central tool in organising and mobilizing the revolution after the election in Iran, mainly because the majority of the Iranian people did not have access to the Internet, and it was difficult to get round the governments blockage of these websites. Furthermore, the main language for the bloggers and tweeters where mainly English and not Farsi, which indicates that the communication from Iran was more focussed on sending information to the outside world of Iran, than the mobilization and organisation of protests and rallies within Iran.
In this perspective it is an overstatement to name the revolution “The Twitter Revolution.” But if the Internets technological development continues to improve, we might see a virtually based revolution. It depends on how widespread the Internet is in the relevant country and for instance whether Twitter, other social media and players win the battle of internet-freedom over the repressive countries. Recently one of the chief executive at Twitter, Evan Williams, implied that they were working on the development of new technologies, which will get around state-based Internet barriers.
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