On June 12, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won reelection with a 62% margin of victory over opponent Mir Hossein Moussavi. This touched off a wave of protests by angry Iranians, many of them young people and women, who said that the election was rigged. Tens of thousands of demonstrators filled the streets of Tehran and other cities wearing green and demanding a new election.
When protesters were told to stay off the street, they took to the rooftops, shouting, “Allahu Akbar”, meaning “God is Great” in a move that many saw as reminiscent of the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Protests turned violent when Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei stood by the results of the election and warned dissidents of a government crackdown if they continued to demonstrate. When the protests continued, the police and the Basij, a voluntary paramilitary force, beat and arrested scores of people, even invading homes to drag away citizens involved in the demonstrations.
The Iranian government has attempted to censor media coverage of the protests and the police crackdown, banning foreign journalists from covering the events and attempting to block computer access and cell phone usage. Protesters and journalists have circumvented their efforts, largely through the use of cell phones, which they have used to send messages via Twitter and to take photos and videos of the events.
Iranian Citizens Use Twitter
Armed with their cell phones, many young Iranians have become citizen journalists, using Twitter as their main form of communication with one another and the world. Threads involving the Iran elections have continued to be among the top trending topics on Twitter since the election. Protesters have used Twitter to send out warnings to other demonstrators about areas to avoid. Tweets have even included such topics as how to care for a gunshot wound and how to use brake fluid to remove the marks that have been painted on the doors of the homes of protestors so that the Basij will know who to target. Another tweet has urged people not to follow new users out of fear that they are government agents infiltrating the network. Links to videos of the protests and violence have been uploaded and shared with the world via Twitter as well.
Video of Neda
One of the most horrific and saddening videos to emerge from the protests is that of the death of a young woman known only as “Neda”. Neda and her father were attending a peaceful demonstration when she was apparently shot by a Basij sniper. The video quickly become viral on Twitter and other social media sites and was picked up by CNN, BBC and other mainstream news outlets. Many have used Neda as a symbol and a rallying cry of the burgeoning revolution.
World Citizens Help Iranian Protestors
Twitter has also become a tool by which citizens in other countries have tried to offer assistance to the demonstrators. One of the most popular retweets, Twitter’s version of a forwarded email, has been asking for one million people outside of Iran to reset their Twitter profiles so that their location is Tehran and their time zone is GMT 3:30. This is being done to jam the Iranian government’s efforts to cut off Twitter accounts located in Tehran.
Citizens are also sending messages of prayer and support to the protesters. One popular tweet said that “On 9/11 the world said we were all Americans. Now we are all Iranians”. People have forwarded links to proxies so that people in Iran can use them to bypass blocked websites and have sent out calls to urge their governments to open their embassies in Iran to the wounded.
Because of the Iranian protests, Twitter has gone from a web tool that some had dismissed as irrelevant, to the main source of communication in a history making event. Twitter has become a link between Iran and the rest of the world and given a voice to citizens who refuse to be silenced.
Click here for more information about Twitter and how to use it.
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Alana Tutwiler - Alana Tutwiler is a Contributing Writer for Suite101.com. She has a bachelor's degree in Special Education from the University of North ...
