The Twitter Revolution That Wasn't | Hacker News Reader

The Twitter Revolution That Wasn't

foreignpolicy.com

39 pointspoints7 comments

Being a resident of a developing country caught in political turmoil, I can identify with this story. Western media often has inaccurate perception of things going on in other parts of the world. I have found that, at times, seemingly trivial events are blown out of proportion while imperative issues go entirely unnoticed. It might not be a premeditated or deliberate exercise, but it certainly is a big failure in part of western media in grasping the ground issues.

There can be no gainsaying that Twitter did a great job of spreading the news about Iranian protests around the world, but it's very much plausible that Twitter was largely of no consequence within Iran.

I do believe that you underestimate the effect of what has happened.

It may not have lead to changes inside Iran yet, but it did show the world that Iran isn't just another country full of towelheads and sandniggers intend on killing us, giving hope to a peaceful solution to the nuclear crisis.

And that is going to impact Iran.

*Use of racist slurs are for effect only and does not indicate agreement.

And you misread my comments.

I am not implying (nor the linked FP article) that Twitter was insignificant in spreading the news around the world. It sure did one hell of a job and undoubtedly helped get the world’s attention to the Iranian’s ordeal. I am just downplaying the role of Twitter in facilitating the Iranians in physically organizing the protest (It contrast to the popular perception that Twitter played a critical role especially in this regard). Twitter was nearly non-existent in the streets of Tehran. That’s what the FP article is suggesting.

It was always clear to me at the time that Twitter's claim to fame was in letting information about Iran events out of the country, when traditional media such as CNN appeared to some a little slow to react -- and this is another debate entirely, a more interesting one but one that the article does not address at all.

Perhaps a few articles implied that Twitter was used for organizing resistance, as this article wants to refute, but that exaggeration, if it was one, does not seem widespread to me. I never encountered this claim before I read the foreignpolicy.com article.

The Western media certainly never tired of claiming that Iranians used Twitter to organize and coordinate their protests following President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's apparent theft of last June's elections.

Seriously? I guess that's the Western media for you. My impression at the time was that the Iranians that were using Twitter were largely using it to inform the rest of the world of their situation. It's not surprising the Western media would gloss over this, because that essentially means Iranians were using Twitter to do the Western media's job for them.

One thing to note about this article is that it's about Twitter. There was - and still is - a pretty huge Green Movement presence on Facebook. The Green Movement is plenty internet-based, certainly. I don't know what purpose it serves to point out that there wasn't much of that going on specifically on Twitter, but I guess it's more interesting for us geeks to note.

Anyway, my sense is that the planning for protests usually happened on Facebook pages, not on Twitter accounts. Make of that what you will.

tweets in English and not in Farsi, viva Silicon Valley! ;-)

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