socialmedian: Iran: Myth and reality about Twitter

User-submitted headlines for this story

Clips

Submitted by Emmeffe2 from Google Reader

Jul 04, 2009

Summary

International media coverage of the Iranian protest movement in the past weeks has widely celebrated ‘Twitter power' as a tool of organizing and reporting on protests, but the reliance on Twitter has had both positive and negative results in this crisis. We look at some of them here to demystify the actual degree of impact.

There is no doubt citizens protesting the results of the June presidential election have made efficient use of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and blogs to ‘immortalize' their movement and broadcast scenes of violence by security forces, but the centerpoint of this movement are the people and not technology.

With journalists prohibited from doing their work and a world audience thirsty for information from Iran, citizen media has often become a primary source of information. Unfortunately, the true identity and reliability of twitter users was not always known, and we saw instances where the lines of fact and fiction blurred - just as they may have in the presidential election results themselves.

1-Communication tool for reformists leaders

After t

...Read the full article

Comments (0)

Add Your Comment