Unit 7, Article 34: Iran’s Twitter Revolution? Maybe Not Yet

Reference:

Schectman, J. (2009). Iran’s twitter revolution? Maybe not yet: Some Iranian election protesters used Twitter to get people on the streets, but most of the organizing happened the old-fashioned way. In P. De Palma (Ed.), Annual editions: Computers in society 10/11 (pp. 154-155). New York: McGraw Hill.

Summary:

This 2009 article talks about what media has been referring to as a “Twitter Revolution” in Iran. The author points out that while Twitter has been used to a small extent in Iran, most of the revolution, which consisted of protests in the streets, was organized by people going door to door, making phone calls, and sending SMS messages on their cell phones. There are just over 8,500 Twitter users whose profiles indicate they are from Iran – not enough to form the kind of protests that took place. Moreover, the Iranian government blocked Twitter so the actual number of users that took the effort to get around the blockage are probably not that big.

The reason why it seems like a Twitter revolution from the outside is that most of the information that the international media has been able to get about what is happening in Iran has come through Twitter. There are some people on the ground in Iran who have been able to send messages. Their messages are not necessarily intended for other Twitter users in Iran, but intended for the international media to get a hold of. The fact that they are using Twitter makes a nice story, and so does the content of the Tweets.

Reaction:

Twitter is an interesting concept for me. While I have never used it, I can see the advantages it has for social networking and distribution of small pieces of information. People who want to publish information about themselves or any topic of their choice can do so from their mobile phones – they do not even need access to a computer. The concept of a Twitter revolution is interesting to me. I agree with the author that there would not be enough people using Twitter to actually organize a revolution. I don’t even think there are enough people in the U.S. on Twitter to organize something to the scale of a revolution. I can see the advantages of Twitter for getting information into the media.

From an educational standpoint, I think this is a great lesson for students in believing what the media is telling us or looking deeper at the research behind popular ideas. I had heard rumors about Twitter revolutions in third-world countries before I read this article. However, after looking at the research of how many users in the country were account holders, I find it hard to believe that any country is having a “Twitter Revolution”. It is more likely that it is being used by a few people on the ground to get the word out to the rest of the world.