We’re all wearing green for Iran now, apparently
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“This is it. The big one. This is the first revolution that has been catapulted onto a global stage and transformed by social media,” says Clay Shirky, professor at New York University and author of the book Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. And what’s had the greatest impact? “It’s Twitter,” says Shirky. This isn’t really the first time demonstrations have been organised or teargas reported via Twitter. Try Bangkok in October 2008. Try Chişinău in April 2009. But we are talking about a powerful new political tool. So, as Crikey reported yesterday, the Iranian government tries to block Twitter and other social media sites, just like the Chinese did before the Tiananmen Square anniversary only days before. Easier said than done. “Twitter is shareable and open and participatory in a way that Facebook’s model prevents,” Shirky points out. “So far, despite a massive effort, the authorities have found no way to shut it down.” It’s compulsory at this point to quote Gilmore’s Law: “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.” But Twitter is also a powerfully seductive mechanism for immediate emotional engagement — “blogging’s meth-paced spawn,” I’ve called it. First-hand accounts of being teargassed demand an immediate response, and forget the analysis. “It’s easy to get caught up in the moment, feel the infectious nature of rumour and the thrill of disseminating third(/fourth/fifth/sixth…)-hand experience, and want to feel part of a global movement,” says Meg Pickard, social media specialist at The Guardian. Never heard of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Mir Hossein Mousavi? Who cares! Thanks to Twitter, we’re all instant experts on Iranian electoral politics. The Houston Chronicle’s Corilyn Shropshire is just one of many urging us to “green” our Twitter or Facebook avatars in solidarity with the protesters in Tehran. And people are responding, offering the demonstrators ways round the Iranian government’s blocks. So why are we supporting Tehran’s green-clad demonstrators, exactly? Is it because they’re English-tweeting middle class city-dwellers with smartphones like us, easier to relate to than the conservative rural Iranians who support Ahmadinejad? Is it knee-jerk support for anyone fighting the man the US neocons portrayed as a new Hitler, even if so far it appears he was elected fairly (at least as such things go)? Or could there be larger forces at play? Why has the world engaged with tweets from Iran, when there wasn’t the same reaction when they came from Thailand or Moldova? Could it be… 138 billion barrels of oil reserves and counting? As Meg Pickard says, “Information which spreads quickly, explosively and loudly isn’t necessarily reliable, accurate or helpful.” |
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Crikey's Guide to Julia Gillard
24 Comments
Perhaps if you broke your article down into successive 140 character tweets it would be easier to read…
Great article. Sums a lot my own opinions.
The fact that the demographic most in support of Mousavi correlates with the demographic that dominate Twitter and other social networking sites, namely young, urban and middle class, has been completely ignored.
could the shortness/vagueness of twitter be the reason lazy journalists are using it to report hearsay as fact? Random tweets allegedly from a place cannot be proved or disproved.
It may seem an odd comment to Stilgherrian but there are people who both Twitter and read history.
Surely most people in the West, as the US and UK governments are carefully saying, oppose the hijacking of the election, not any particular candidate.
@Oz: I should’ve added that rural conservatives are also likely to be able to tweet their way to a demonstration in Tehran, yes. They’ve got farms to run.
@Heathdon McGregor: I see two reasons tweets from random strangers are being reported as fact. 1. Mainstream Western journalists are being evicted from Tehran. 2. Twitter, while representative of a real change to human communications (somehow), is also flavour of the month. Mention Twitter and your story is immediately oh-so-modern. Oh. I did that.
@Gavin Moodie: Has the election actually been hijacked? All I’ve seen so far are unsubstantiated allegations — though of course I’m comfortable in Sydney being fed propaganda like everyone else.
The ‘results’ announced by the ministry of state are incredible.
I wouldn’t worry. I’ve been following this on Twitter since it started and, after an initial incessant stream of green avartared tweets in support of ‘democracy’, there has been a marked decline in tweets about Iran over the last two days from those I’m following . As I tweeted yesterday: “looks like Twitter will tire of the Iranian ‘revolution’ long before the Iranians!”.
The Washington Post seems to have a reasonably summary of the questions surrounding the election result.
I have greened my Twitter avatar, changed my location and time zone to Tehran and am following #iranelection stream, as well as the conventional media. I am not taking sides, but I do support the right to protest and I do support revolution of the people, by the people, for the people - no matter the geography.
I don’t discount your “oil” theory for the popularity of this particular situation, but consider perhaps how Bangkok and Chişinău were covered in the conventional news (or, rather, weren’t), and also the West’s way of protraying Ahmadinejad as the crazy guy in regular reports. He’s never far from the news, so this is another story involving him and his crazy ways.
There are also quite a lot of images to go along with the reports from Iran - not something I recall seeing from Chişinău.
why would oil be any reason for twitters to take action??
- for me it’s the promise of a more liberal regime under Mouravi
I doubt that the election of Ahmadinejad was legal, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/15/iran-election-analysis-figures,
that, the outcry in Iran, the reports that the ballot papers have been burned and journalists being censored and evicted make me seriously question the legitimacy of the elections
I also suspect the so called conservative rural supporters of Ahmadinejad, would be too fearful of speaking out in their small communities
Nerida. You support “revolution of the people, by the people, for the people”. I was under the impression most people were supporting democracy but clearly you are not one of them. Had the result gone the other way and there were 2 million Ahmadinejad supporters on the streets would THAT constitute a ‘revolution of the people, by the people, for the people’?
The only reason you and everone else are even aware of what’s happening in Iran is because one side is claiming that the democratic election was rigged. They aren’t complaining that there are NO elections, because there ARE. They are protesting the RESULT of an election. Had they ‘won’ they would be declaiming the great Iranian democracy from the rooftops. So all this talk of revolution is, frankly, claptrap. It is clear that, just as in any society (eg: the USA) a large section of the population will feel aggrieved when the result of an election goes against them. The first question that needs to be asked here is whether in fact the results were rigged and whether in fact Mousavi (who supervised the killings of 30,000 dissidents when he was last in power in Iran) was the real winner.
I’ve yet to see any evidence to support Mousavi’s claim but apparently evidence is not required for people like you who just want to feel good, and be SEEN to be feeling good about supporting something of which you clearly have almost no knowledge or understanding.
What has happened in Iran over the past few weeks, including open dissent, debate on TV and radio and critical articles in Iranian media has been unprecedented and has opened a floodgate of expectation for the largely urban supporters of Mousavi. This may well lead to welcome changes in Iranian society and politics but the idea that this is a simple case of a repressive regime faking an election result against overwhelmong and widespraed opposition and then shooting anyone who objects is very far from what is really going on in Iran.
All good debate. 75% Iranians live rurally. 75% of Iranians are under 30. Many under-30 rural Iranians have University credentials. the mullahs underwrote widespread tertiary education, but not the jobs needed afterwards. Its not hard to find disenchanted under 30 Iranians in the provinces.
Oil notwithstanding and notwithstanding Moussavi was PM under Ayatollah Khomenei, the ayatollahs/unelected Guardian Council are under challenge. Who knows where it might end? On 29 November, 2003 SMH’s Christopher Kremmer talked with once-leading cleric Montazeri, then under house arrest in Qom. An extract:
“Where did the revolution go wrong, I wanted to know? Montazeri, a co-author of Iran’s constitution, says the clerics’ power far outstripped the intentions of the revolution’s founding fathers. He calls the main bastion of this power, the Guardian Council, a “government within a government”.
“We defined their duty as just to supervise the fairness of the elections, nothing more,” he says, pointing out that he opposed later amendments that allowed the council to disqualify candidates. “People have been deprived of the power to vote for their favoured candidates. Necessarily, when people are deprived of their power to vote, the legitimacy of the government is undermined.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1030597/posts
It is more than likely Ahmedinejad won - he is a canny politician who also pork-barrels (whoops) target groups. And stands up to the US/West. Tehran’s educated were predicting his win before the election. Maybe many in the international media didn’t want to hear this. And media took a few days to analyse polls, or talk to people who could (with mixed results). Meanwhile the young, Western-looking, (but not necessarily all pro-Western), urban, tech-savvy Tehrani Twitterati got going. With all the usual issues of verification that face journalists, plus censorship, attacks from the Basij and deaths they have shown skill in the business of getting information out that journalists like me can learn from. Just adrenaline-fuelled excitement? Well, you must be sitting in comfortable chairs somehwere in the West. Both the potential power shifts and the cyber side of post-election Iran has been fascinating to watch from where I am working in next-door Afghanistan. The rest is still unfolding.
Ok, as a Stilgherrian fan, I find this hard to say, but here goes: what a load of bollocks.
And I’m not just referring to the criticism that Twitter is bad for “analysis” (duh), or the myopic dismissal of free(-er) social media speech cropping up in Iran as “propaganda”. (C’mon Stilgherrian, we both know everything’s propaganda!). Nor that you mention tweets getting “reported as fact” even though (ironically) you don’t provide any examples of this. Maybe you’re getting mixed up with retweets or the reporting of tweets? Not even that your argument is built almost entirely on the sage thoughts of a “social media specialist” (cue laughter).
No, what the article suffers from is ‘the fool looks at the finger that points at the sky’ syndrome. Yes, some people from around the world are jumping on the bandwagon without a decent understanding of what’s going on. There’s information, and mis-information, and it’s a bit chaotic and hard to filter. Welcome to the new media age. But contrary to your implication, understanding, insight and genuine concern is not somehow mutually exclusive from the use of Twitter.
As far as I have seen, the real issue - the central plank of the protesters’ lament - is over the legitimacy of the election process. They have loads of concerns and allegations (easy to track down) concerning the election, and yes, they are desperately in need of a ‘smoking gun’ and clear-cut evidence of fraud to mount a more convincing case.
Given such doubts, I don’t know what the problem is in voicing such concerns and mounting a protest campaign (with or without international voices)? So @OZ, it is utterly irrelevant how Twitter users correlate with different candidates. And in reply to @MIKEPOWER; no, it’s not a protest over the result, it’s a protest over the process.
It is certainly easy to be smug in inner-city Sydney (I know I found it easy!) and talk about “unsubstantiated allegations” but it is worthwhile to remember the legal maxim (especially in a repressed, theocratic, dictatorial country) that “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”
So I am keeping an open mind and a close eye on developments. If the officially announced election results are genuine then all’s well (although recounting allegedly fraudulent ballots won’t actually change the original numbers!). Of course the crackdown on free speech and government-sponsored violence is another matter.
But in the meantime, I want to support those people in Iran, be they rural or urban, who need greater confidence in free and fair elections.
As for the green Twitter avatars; well, after exchanging messages with a blogger in Tehran and hearing his desperation and exhaustion and fears, I felt a profound human need to show him a symbol of my support. So I turned my avatar green and sent out the first tweet (I think) asking others to do the same on June 14.
Many, many, many others have done the same thing. I can’t speak for them, but for me it was a moral decision. And as Dante is quoted: “The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.”
it’s not a protest over the result, it’s a protest over the process.
So had Mousavi been declared winner he and his supporters would have still taken to the streets to protest against the ‘process’, would they? Bollocks! Of course not. They would have hailed the wonderful democratic syystem of Iran.
Bloggers and Twitterers refer to supporting ‘the people’ of Iran. What ‘people’? Does that include the supporters of the incumbent?
Loads of concerns and allegations. Yeah, so have those people who believe 9/11 was an inside job using explosives and that the moon landings were faked. I don’t give a toss about allegations, point me to some facts, like THESE.
So what was it that made you doubt the election results? A careful analysis of the election backed up by experience and knowledge of Iran and it’s political process?
Maybe you are privvy to inside information? Or did you just assume that the protests from the power-hungry, mass murdering Mousavi must be justified because, after all, we all know what a monster the incumbent is?
Truth is most of these twitterers could point to Iran on an atlas. This is an opportunity for the self-righteous to wear a ribbon or change their avatar colour. Next month it will be something else. It’s largely about making themselves feel good.
You claim to want to help the people of Iraq but most of those people don’t Twitter or use the internet and they are staunch supporters of the present regime.
They don’t want your ‘help’. Rather like the people of Iraq didn’t want our ‘help’!
Whoops! Obviously, I meant to write: Truth is most of these twitterers couldn’t point to Iran on an atlas.
Geez, what a great demonstration of contorting logic, inventing hypothetical situations (& ‘predicting’ their outcome), using ridiculous analogies (9/11? Iraq? moon landings?) and being so hypocritical (MIKEPOWER talks about “careful analysis” and assumptions, and then makes unfounded generalisations about the motivations and competencies of millions of people.)
Tamas Calderwood watch out!
Then again, it’s good to be able to have this debate openly. A principle which I assume you do support Mike?
Millions of people? Don’t kid yourself. In a few short weeks Iran will have left their little heads for good.
You talk about ‘concerns and allegations’ and I point out that people have concerns and allegationas about all sorts of things, including the ones I mentioned. What we need are FACTS. Allegations are two a penny and meaningless. So someone in Des Moines is ‘concerned’ about the election process in a country they only know about because their previous dope of a president spent a lot of time demonising it. They know nothing of middle-east politics but get a warm fuzzy people supporting ‘democracy’.
Why not actually answer my points? What is your concern based on? How did YOU decide that the Iranian electoral process was such a cause for concern in the first place that you HAD to do something about it (even if that something only involved changing the colour of your avatar). Tell me something, anything? It wasn’t just a ‘gut feeling’ was it? Where is the analysis, the process by which you decided the good people of Iran needed YOUR support?
What do you say to the people in Iran (who may well be in the majority) who don’t want your ‘help’.
Don’t just pick apart comments and posts ANSWER the points being raised. If you can’t or won’t do that - GO AWAY!
I could respond again (even if most things you demand are in my original post), however in my experience, when you start debating people who rely on CAPS lock to make points, it isn’t worth the pain. But thanks for the entertainment and the GO AWAY send off. Made me smile!
Shorter Justin McMurray: I can’t answer your points but I’ll wave away your concerns by suggesting I’ve already covered them (you haven’t, go back and read your own comment) and then make some cheap jibes about caps lock (yawn) and generally give the impression that I’m just far too superior to debate with the likes of you!
I’m only interested in having some answers to my questions. Clearly, and as I suspected, you can’t do that. The rest is irrelevant, petulant bollocks. So hurry along and save the poor people of Iran. Goodbye.
Whether it is a Rose Revolution in Georgia, or Orange Revolution in the Ukraine or a Green revolution in Iran - the source and inspiration is exactly the same: $70mln decided by the Congress to spend on so called ‘democratic changes in Iran’.
It is also false that only the rural and the elderly were voting for Ahmadinejad.
Comparing him to Hitler is an absolute disgrace and an insult to all the victims of the WWII.
It is an insult to people like my mum and dad who spent three years in a German concentration camp where I was born.
I miss my words to describe all those ignorami who have never experienced carpet bombings, fear for life, renditions, being shot at and wounded for life, spending days and nights under the rubbles.
But some blind people love talking about colours. It gives them false impression that they have … vision. And their only knowledge is playing with gadgets.
Iran, unlike other countries, hasn’t got a record of invading other countries for the past 300 years. The government of Iran have never stated, unlike other governments of other countries, that they plan to invade any country.
@Justin McMurray: It’s nice to know I’ve got at least one fan. I’m one of the heaviest users of Twitter in Australia, so I’ll agree that it certainly isn’t mutually exclusive from (with?) “analysis”. But it seemed to me that green avatars were appearing after what I suspected was a genuinely human emotional reaction rather that any understanding of the politics, plus some hand-waving about “supporting democracy”.
I’m not a big fan of bandwagons. By all means, people can pick sides in another nation’s disputes however they like. But, like the People’s Alliance for Democracy in Thailand (the “Yellow Shirts”), appropriation of the D-word doesn’t necessarily make you democratic. Calling for the overthrow of an election result you don’t like without evidence of wrong-doing, is “doing it wrong”. In my opinion.
In Thailand, neither the Yellow Shirts and the Red Shirts are untainted. I suspect it’s no different in Iran, but personally I have no idea.
@Rena Zurawel: Your point about $70 million decided by the US Congress to spend on “democratic changes in Iran” is backed up by this 2008 Stratfor report, Geopolitical Diary: Iran, Psywar and the Hersh Article:
Ah, the shadow world of Intelligence…
Meanwhile, I knew I’d get criticism for describing Meg Pickard as “social media specialist”. Maybe I should have user her title “community manager” instead. I heard her speak at Fairfax’s Media09 conference, and my impression is that she’s on of the good people in the field, not one of the hand-waving charlatans.
Mike Power: You will be delighted to know there’s a Twitter-er in the ranks who can not only point out Iran in an Atlas but can say I have been there-about six years ago.
Ditto Syria, ditto Jordan.
Worthwhile to share. My girlfriend was contacted by an Iranian friend she hadn’t seen for over 12 years.
“I’m writing you to thank you, I saw your profile picture is green and you can’t imagine how happy I felt when I saw that there are people like you out there in the world that are supporting us and supporting our cause! I couldn’t stop crying! I wanted to say thanks…”
Beyond the cynicism and social media naivety illustrated in some of these comments, this shows the point behind people (including myself) who took symbolic actions to support Iranian protesters. It was not some mark of political self-righteousness, but a human gesture of connectedness.