I have spent the last several days "watching" events unfold in Iran via Twitter and participating - to the extent that I can, sitting halfway around the world - in passing on what information I could verify as fact. It has been, in the way of the ancient Chinese proverb, interesting. Twitter has become the poster site for a new kind of communication, in a way I do not believe even Evan Williams and Biz Stone (the founders of twitter) ever dreamed it could be. It has proven its relevance to today's society arguably more surely than any start-up in the last 50 years.
Using the hashtag (a tag, or search term) #iranelection to search for news turns up thousands of new tweets every minute, a flood of information, some of it factual, some of it not, all of it (spammers aside) having to do with the protests in Iran. During the media blackout of yesterday - and the even heavier blackout all day and night today - it was the only way to find out what might be happening on the ground in Tehran and around that country. But more than updates from the front and support for those on the ground from the rest of the world, the hashtag has become a giant game of Telephone, a two-way stream of resistance passing the word from one protestor to another, sometimes directly, but also largely via strangers sitting at their keyboards thousands of miles away, retweeting (passing on) the information and sending it out to their own network of friends and followers, for even more people to see and pass on. Tweets* have gone out with everything from news of where the clashes between protestor and Basij were located, to advice on what to do when tear-gassed, the addresses and locations of hospitals and embassies offering help, locations protestors should avoid to escape capture or violence, outting tweeters who were fakes or government operatives spreading disinformation, and news of explosions, deaths, and injuries. In addition, protestors have used Twitter to coordinate their rallies and to get the word out about them, to pass on messages from opposition leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi, and to post the url's of other websites containing videos and photographs of the protests.
The Twitterverse has responded to those in Iran with a tidalwave of support, coloring their icons green, the color of Mousavi's supporters, changing the location and timezone listed in their profiles to Tehran or Iran, and passing the word not to repeat the names of Iranian tweeters once it became known that the Ministry in Iran had started to search the site using those parameters to identify members of the opposition. A popular message retweeted at the moment says, "On 9/11, the World said we are all Americans; today, we are all Iranians." Sitting at my keyboard half a world away, waiting for news and hoping for the best, passing on what information I can verify and hope will help, while pundits on CNN rattle about with less information than I, it feels true. In the face of a government-imposed blackout and restrictions resulting in a complete absence of any information-gathering tools of their own, networks and news agencies have themselves turned to twitter for reports of events as they unfold.
Just a few days ago, one of my friends remarked that she just doesn't see the need for twitter or understand why anyone would want to use it. I have a feeling that's about to change. The website has eclipsed its function as mere trend or messaging service and evolved into something more. A new kind of beast. It will be interesting to see where it goes.
*tweets are 140 character text messages
(I blurred the names in the above image to protect the tweeters.)
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