By Samvel MARTIROSYAN
IT Expert
Yerevan
Recently, the Islamic Republic of Iran has become one of specific polygons of mass application of new media and IT technologies. It may be stated that it isIran, where, after the presidential elections of 2009, the technologies, now considered as one of the key information factors of the Arab revolutions, have been used for the first time.
In summer 2009, whenIranexperienced post election uprisings, information field was in crisis: the authorities and opposition were plunged into information confrontation with the use of all available means. The opposition also got a wide international support.
In response to the unrest after the presidential elections, the authorities, among the first measures, resorted to information blocking. The elections took place on June 12, 2009, and as soon as on June 16, the authorities forbade foreign media from street reporting. /1/ Since the local press had already been under the pressing those days, a real information hunger emerged.
In that period, the opposition started actively using all possible means of citizen journalism. The Iranian developments have the following specifics: despite the fact that already known methods were used, their combination and massive character were somewhat unprecedented. Every hour opposition activists disseminated information about the ongoing events in the blogs and social-networking sites. In addition to the text information, photos and videos were also used those days.
Protesters quickly understood that the pro-governmental press is unable to provide convincing propaganda for international community. That is why the Internet was filled with non-professional videos, not of the good quality, but giving an idea about the bloody events. They used conventional mobile phones, increasing the generality of information and the speed of its dissemination, proving the non-competitiveness of the pro-governmental press.
Opposition used several large platforms. In the blogosphere these were mainly Blogspot and WordPress sites. The local blog areas were controlled by security services, so understandably, they were not so active. So it is Youtube that became the most active space for video materials. However, for posting quick information and photos Twitter was used more. At that time, Facebook inIranwas quite passive – it had only 150,000 Iranian users (for comparison, as of May 2011, there are 170,000 users inArmenia); in addition, special services were actively blocking this network. /2/
For the first time, Twitter got serious political influence before Iranian events, during parliament elections inMoldova, where it had been used as a tool for quick mobilization of opposition activists. As forIran, Twitter was used there for the first time not only for mobilization, but also for dissemination of information.
The opposition activists and supporters posted their tweets just from the streets, where clashes with government forces took place. Twitter enabled to post not only short messages from mobile phones, but also photos. In fact, the Iranian rebel cities were full of citizen journalists. Meanwhile, the traditional press stayed in paralysis.
In the situation, when the alternative journalism in fact replaced traditional media, engagement of the international community became very important. While there were just tens of active bloggers, actively posting from Iranian streets (by various sources, online information from the streets was reported by 60-100 opposition members), the number of their sympathizers outside ofIranreached tens or hundreds of thousands, if not millions.
Every post about the events, taking place inIranat the particular moment, was multiplied in Twitter by the followers, whose number exceeded the number of journalists thousand times. By mid-June 2009, Twitter became the only large source of information for the world media. To imagine the scale of increasing influence of this web site, we can remind that on June 16 it was reported that the U.S. State Department officially asked Twitter to provide uninterrupted work of the web site, which had to be turned off for a couple of hours by technical reasons). /3/
Such an attention of the authorities and the largest mass media yet more increased the interest towards Twitter. In addition to the dissemination of information, Twitter made those Iranian opposition sympathizers, who lived outsideIran, feel as if they were participating in the revolutionary events. For this reason, at some moments the number of posts about Iranian events reached almost 200,000 per hour. At that time, the information, related Iranian events, was specially tagged with #IranElections, #Iran, #Tehranand other hash tags.
According to Trendrr statistics, on June 16, 2009, there were 2.25 million Iran-related blog posts. There were 10 to 50 tweets posted per hour in Twitter, and at some moments this figure reached several hundreds thousands. /1/
Therefore, the role of social media and citizens’ journalism during the post-election events inIrancan hardly be overestimated. But this experience also showed the vulnerabilities of citizens’ journalism. For example, it was very difficult to verify information placed in the blogs and social networks and ensure confidence of the sources. Instigators and misinformers quickly emerged in the exorbitant flow of information. In addition, the speed, with which information was disseminated, led to emergence of obviously unverified speculations. There are other circumstances, too: the Iranian activists, fighting against opposition (theoretically, among these activists there might have been employees of special services), quickly started to post misinformation in Twitter, acting under the guise of opposition activists.
In fact, Iranian events have demonstrated the force of citizens’ journalism and social media and their ability to beat the censorship for the first time. From the other hand, it made clear that these are just the tools and alternative media cannot be unambiguously trusted, since it may disseminate unchecked information and intentional misinformation.
/1/ Foreign correspondents were banned to make reportages fromTehranstreets
http://www.vesti.ru/doc.html?id=293996
/2/ Mousavi supporters rally support on Twitter http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/06/16/iran-election-twitter-idUSLG7253220090616
/3/ State Department Asks Twitter to Stay Up (and Other Notes on Digital Diplomacy) http://personaldemocracy.com/node/9015
/4/ Up To 200,000 Tweets AboutIranSent An Hour
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/Iran-And-Twitter-Pro-Mousavi-Supporters-Drowned-Out-By-US-And-UK-Tweets-Amid-Election-Protests/Article/200906315311513
