Democracy and Governance

Where communication and media are central to Democracy and Governance


Average Rating: no ratings submitted

Iran's Twitter Revolution

Author

Ari Berman

The Nation

Publication Date

June 15, 2009

Summary

From the The Nation blog page, The Notion, author Ari Berman claims that information and communication technology (ICT) is creating access to the most recent news on the June 12 2009 Iranian opposition election protests, available through blogs, YouTube, and Twitter updates from Tehran.

Berman cites reporting done over Twitter by a university student in Tehran who goes by the moniker Tehran Bureau. The Iranian authorities reportedly shut his website down over the weekend, but he was able to send short posts around the world over Twitter. The twitter messaging network has included a list of Iranian bloggers twittering about the clashes between opposition protesters and government forces.

In the United States (US), as reported by Berman, bloggers at such websites as The Atlantic and the Huffington Post "surpassed most traditional news organisations by posting around the clock updates", relying on YouTube footage from inside Iran. Outside the US, news organisations such as the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and Britain's Channel 4 have done on-the-spot reporting, "often shooting on their cell phones" amidst the "outpouring of texts, tweets and video from Tehran."


Contact

The Nation

33 Irving Place

New York NY
10003
United States
Tel: 212 209 5400
Fax: 212 982 9000

Source

The Nation blog website on June 18 2009.


Placed on the Communication Initiative site June 18 2009
Last Updated July 14 2009



How useful did you find the knowledge and contacts on this page to your work?


0
No votes yet
Your rating: None


COMMENTS POSTED



Help Seed The CI Network

Jobs and more...

Newspapers and Democracy

How central to democracy are newspapers - some of which are being lost to budget cuts and other changes - as opposed to blogs, YouTube, emails, text messaging, twittering, and the like?