Twitter and the Elections in Iran

by Ron Samul

I am really new to Twitter, but I’ve been waiting for more information about the elections in Iran and what is going on there. I found some good articles and video from the BBC and the AP – but once I got to Twitter and started following the protester directly, I was caught up in the movement.

Protesters, citizens, and students have been sending out little messages that create an amazing tapestry of information, visions, views, and opinions. It has been so powerful that the company that hosts and supports Twitter has postponed scheduled update outages so that the voice of the pro-democracy movement in Iran wouldn’t be turned off.

Now, the government has started shutting down access to the Internet. In response, people around the world are opening new IP addresses to help the people in Iran communicate to us and more importantly, to each other. Hackers are helping too. But they are hacking into the old regime websites and shutting them down. For them, it is there way of contributing to the cause.

CNN and other news media are too slow and too static to help and verify the information that is coming through twitter and other sites. People are helping inside and out. As we found out during the Obama election cycle, information is power and it can move people.

I have to say that I didn’t like Twitter when I signed on, but checking out what is happening is not only empowering and informational, it is a connection that a whole generation of young people have been shaping for years.

Following the posts on Twitter has been an inspiration to the humanity of it all. It has also been haunting and sad that people are fearing for their lives, changing locations so they aren’t caught by the police, and are still trying to reach out to the world.

Does technology shift the culture or has the culture made the technology a tool for change? We shall see.