Social Media Revolution
June 19, 2009 – 2:56 pm by Griffin Hammond
It’s been a week since the Iranian government announced President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s landslide election victory over popular reformist candidate Mirhossein Mousavi, which sparked lasting, national demonstrations. Protesters believe the election results are fraudulent, and see this moment as an opportunity for change, or perhaps revolution.Certainly, if a revolution is possible, it has been aided by social media technology, which is embraced by Iran’s significant youth population. (“More than two-thirds of Iran’s population is less than 30 years old”!) The Iranian government has taken many steps to stop the spread of information, reportedly including media censorship and intimidation, blocking Internet and cell phone access, and even sending police to destroy civilian computer hardware. For those able to circumvent the government’s restrictions, social media has been crucial to keeping the lines of communication intact, both between Iranians, and to the rest of the world.
Last year, the U.S. presidential election drove significant traffic to many social media sites, and likely played a large role in Twitter’s 202% growth and The Huffington Post’s 70% growth from May to November 2008. Iran’s election, though, is truly highlighting the power of these communication tools to shape politics, and some social media sites have changed the way they operate to accommodate this historic use of these channels:
- Twitter once again provides news value. While Iran’s media censorship (or perhaps our own ethnocentrism) has effectively kept the protests from commanding the U.S. 24/7 cable newscycle, defeated presidential candidate Mousavi reminded his supporters via Twitter that “One Person = One Broadcaster.” Simply search “#iranelection” on Twitter and you’ll find constant stream of Iranian news-sharing. (In fact, the #iranelection hashtag has consistently been one of the top trending topics for the past week.)
- HuffPo’s live-blog has all the latest news. Shining in the traditional media blackout is The Huffington Post, whose admirable Nico Pitney is live-blogging the updates from Iran. Where once viewers turned to CNN for the latest coverage of world-shaking events, an individual blogger is currently outperforming his traditional media colleagues by leaps and bounds. (I’ve been glued to this live blog daily to keep up.)
- The uprising begins to affect the way social media businesses operate. Twitter proprietor Biz Stone announced Monday that their scheduled maintenance would be moved to the middle of the night in Iran, to avoid excommunicating Iranian protesters.
- YouTube embraces its news role. Tuesday, YouTube reminded users that while they do not ordinarily allow graphic, violent videos, the videos coming out of Iran serve an important news service and will not be taken down. They’ve also collected some of the most important videos on their blog, Citizentube.
- Google provides translation aid. To better facilitate the open exchange of information across cultures, Google added Persian (Farsi) last night to their Google Translate tool.
- Facebook follows suit. Also last night, Facebook opened their Persian-version of their site.
It’s heartening to see as popular as the social media giants get, they still recognize their core values of open communication. For those of us in the business of social media, these kind of events bring legitimacy to social technologies that are often criticized as narcissistic or wastes of time. But more importantly, these technologies provide a true democratic playing field for individual voices to shape their societies. Especially when lives have been lost and many more are on the line, communication is vital.
Above photo by Shahram Sharif
