‘Net effect: Social media aid uprising

Media control

Iran’s government controls its traditional media: newspapers, radio and television. Atop the government are the Islamic clerics of the Guardian Council and the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini, who supports incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The government also controls access to the country by foreign media.

As the presidential campaign unfolded, supporters of reform candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi turned to Internet-driven social media such as Twitter, Facebook and Flickr to get out their messages and to organize. Ahmadinejad was considered a prohibitive favorite for re-election, but as polls showed Mousavi gaining support, the government temporarily shut down access to the social networking sites.

After the June 12 election’s disputed result, the social media network again came into play as supporters of Mousavi and Karroubi used it to transmit images and reports about voting disputes and what they said was violent police suppression of demonstrations.

Via the Internet and cable and satellite television networks, the world has seen and heard firsthand accounts of the massive protests, even when foreign reporters were not present to document them.

Technology spreads

It wasn’t the first time Iranians had clashed with their ayatollah-led government. In 1999, students in Tehran erupted after a reformist newspaper was shut down. But a decade ago, the concept of social media was years away and Iraq’s nascent cellphone network was small and easily controlled. The revolt quickly disappeared from the airwaves, and only later could it be confirmed that dissidents had been imprisoned, tortured and even killed.

Since then, use of the Internet and wireless technology has become much more widespread among Iran’s young and affluent city dwellers —- the bulk of the reform candidates’ supporters.

“It’s being used to try to demonstrate that the official view of events from authorities is not the real view of events,” Christopher Waddell, associate director of the school of journalism and communications at Ottawa’s Carleton University, told CanWest News Service.

Exaggerated effect?

With foreign reporters unable to travel freely in Iran, major international news organizations have quoted widely from online postings, and cable news networks, including CNN, have shown clips from Web-posted videos of the demonstrations. Twitter has been especially prominent because its ability to quickly relay brief reports lends itself to the fast-moving, chaotic situation. At its peak Tuesday, Twitter reported it had 221,744 “tweets” mentioning Iran in a single hour, and the U.S. government asked the San Francisco-based company to postpone a planned shutdown for maintenance so users in Iran would not be cut off.

Some, however, think the importance of Twitter is being overblown. Among them is social media blogger Gaurav Mishra. He wrote last week that the actual number of Twitter users in Iran was small, and that Twitter reports, rather than being an organizing tool for the protesters, mainly helped focus international media attention on the protests.

Another concern is that there is no way to verify the source of postings —- a caution CNN repeatedly cited as it nevertheless showed videos and cited messages obtained from them. In addition, the information they provide is disorganized, providing a fragmented and often confusing account.

“The problem with this is that it’s so unfiltered, it’s like being in a blizzard sometimes, and it’s very hard to judge what’s true and what’s not,” James Topham, a Twitter user and communications director for War Child Canada, told CanWest.

But Timothy O’Brien, a blogger for new technology blog O’Reilly Radar, wrote that while he, like Mishra, thought Twitter’s impact had been exaggerated, the overall role of social media in Iran could not be overstated: “These protests are facilitated by an entire technology stack which includes Twitter, cellphones with cameras, Facebook, (text messaging), YouTube, Google … . Iranian colleagues have told me directly that Web 2.0 technologies are allowing them to communicate with other Iranians in ways that were impossible a few years ago.”

Feeling threatened

Could social media, by undermining state control of media outlets, help topple regimes such as Iran’s? The German-based International Society for Human Rights is promoting that idea, circulating an image showing Ahmadinejad cowering on a chair as a computer mouse snakes toward him. Other versions depict former Cuban President Fidel Castro and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in similar poses.

Actions by some less-than-Democratic governments would suggest they see social media as a threat. China closed access to such sites before the recent 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square uprising, and there were reports that Facebook was blocked in Moldova after an April demonstration against the election of a Communist parliament.

Iran’s government issued a stern warning Thursday, via the Iran Daily newspaper, that its Center for Cyber Crime would seek out “those inciting violence and spreading rumors in cyberspace,” who “could face grave consequences.” It lumped the Internet in with its customary enemies as it alleged that dissident Web sites were backed by Western interests.

Whether they result in regime change or a massive crackdown on dissent, the Iranian election and the protests that followed are being called the “Twitter Revolution.”Sunday Nation/World Editor Bill Steiden compiled this article.

Sunday Nation/World EditorBill Steiden compiled this article.