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Twitter in Iran: Revolutionary Lifeline or Media Exaggeration?

by Amar Toor on June 15, 2010 at 04:40 PM

twitter bird with iranian flagLast summer, many Western media outlets were quick to dub the Iranian political uprising "The Twitter Revolution" as a nod to the integral role that the micro-blogging site supposedly played in coordinating protest events throughout the country. But how much of what happened in Iran can actually be attributed to Twitter? Was it truly the conduit of information and communication that many have portrayed it to be? Or was the entire story just another narrative perpetuated by an Occidental media swimming in its own echo chamber?

In a circumspect article for Foreign Policy, Golnaz Esfandiari delves deeper into the Iranian Twitter myth, and, with the help of several insightful anecdotes, argues that the social network may not have been as 'revolutionary' as some have led us to believe. While the author acknowledges that the site did play a quantifiable role in broadcasting the Iranian conflict to a global audience, she questions how valuable English-language tweets could've been to activists on the ground. As she says, many Western journalists simply scrolled through Iranian tweets in English, without wondering, "why people trying to coordinate protests in Iran would be writing in any language other than Farsi."

Esfandiari goes on to point out that, despite all the good that Twitter did by spreading Iran's plight to larger media outlets, it also proved to be a virulent vehicle for rumor mongering. Tweeted rumors that police officials were dumping acid and boiling water on protesters were never confirmed, and one claim that Presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi had been assassinated was quickly debunked. Twitter and social media also helped create a false martyr, in, Saeedeh Pouraghayi, a woman whose murder at the hands of Iranian police was later proven to be a hoax -- staged, perhaps, by the Iranian government.

Perhaps the hyperbole surrounding the Twitter Revolution can be ascribed to an inherently solipsistic media. As we know all too well, journalists today love nothing more than talking at length about contemporary media -- largely because the tightly compressed, self-referential structure of today's news cycle -- only encourages this kind of navel-gazing. Of course, when a new media form like Twitter appears to take on a cultural and political significance that no one could've ever imagined, it's even easier to get lost in the phenomenon. As Esfandiari argues, though, that fascination should never detract attention from "the Iranians who have made real, not remote or virtual, sacrifices in pursuit of justice." [From: ForeignPolicy]

Tags: Iran, iran election, IranElection, IranProtests, media, politics, top, twitter

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