It may seem an obvious point to many but the importance of Twitter (and other social media) in the Iranian protests and their suppression over the allegedly fraudulent election has made a massive impact on how I view the micro-blog.
A few months ago, I was really struggling to see the utility of Twitter: I had seen it used pretty well as as an ideas-gathering device (‘I’m giving a talk on x/y/z, what do you think I should talk about?’) and it seemed that if you had enough followers and an interesting enough proposition, you could get some nice concise pointers but on the whole I was still in the ‘fad’ camp – it was all a bit too en vogue. When one site becomes the poster boy (or girl…) of social media, I’m always a bit wary.
Then I read this: a social media timeline of the Iran Election Crisis, a blow-by-blow news account of user generated content. It reminded me of Helen Boaden’s keynote speech at e-Democracy 08 on ‘the role of citizen journalism in modern democracy’.
With foreign journalists finding it very difficult to stay in Iran, this user-generated content is getting to be the only on-the-ground reportage in some places. The filtering of this information, its accuracy and its sheer mass do make it difficult to navigate but the very fact that it’s being produced and shared is the important thing here. Twitter has been a really important resource, allowing people to upload short updates, to report their news and to reach a world audience who want to know what is going on. This flow of information is very hard to suppress – I think in this case Twitter has proven itself, to me at least, to be more than a fad.
