OSNews > Thread > "Thanks for the article" by ralph

Twitter, Facebook Play Key Role for Iranian Protesters

Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 15th Jun 2009 18:14 UTC

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr. All demon spawn from Web 2.0, and we all love to make fun of these websites and the services they provide. However, here in the West, where everything is at arm's length and democracy is something we do not remember fighting for, it's easy to forget that what looks silly and useless to us, can be of the utmost importance somewhere else in the world. Update: I've been informed that the first casualty has fallen at the hands of armed government supporters. Hundreds of thousands of people are now on the streets all over Iran. More updates inside.

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Thanks for the article

by ralph on Mon 15th Jun 2009 20:21 UTC

Member since:
2005-07-10

It is indeed fascinating to follow what his happening in Iran right now and new media seems to play a key role here.

Twitter, which I always found silly before, seems to really play an important part for the people in Iran and it's also one of the best ways to get first hand accounts of what is going on in Iran.

All in all blogs and twitter seem to be doing a much better job at covering the situation than much of the mainstream media. At least here in Germany, TV coverage is awful, to put it mildly, and international news channels like CNN are doing a terrible job.

For anyone who is interested, here are some sites I found worth following about the situation in Iran:
http://niacblog.wordpress.com/
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/13/iran-demonstrations-viole_...

http://twitter.com/TehranBureau/
http://twitter.com/iranelection09
http://twitter.com/StopAhmadi

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RE: Thanks for the article

by ssa2204 on Mon 15th Jun 2009 21:13 in reply to "Thanks for the article"

Member since:
2006-04-22

Just out of coincidence I happened to have gone over to Andrew Sullivan's site earlier just to see if he had written anything on the healthcare debate, and was surprised it was down due to increased traffic (although DOS was initially suspected). Huffingtonpost seems to be one of the few outlets truly covering this as extensively as they have. CNN, MSNBC, etc. all seem to have for most of yesterday and today treated this as a very small and insignificant event (at least not in proportion to the significance this has for the whole world!)

This is really an amazing event to watch and follow, because we simply have absolutely no idea where this could lead. Those of us who followed the initial days of the attempted August coup in the Soviet Union NEVER EVER would have thought this would lead to the dissolution of the entire Soviet Union. Then again, in China at Tiananmen Square many thought that change was going to come, that it was inevitable.

No matter what, Iran will never be the same. The demographics, much like here in the U.S., have shifted in favor of the young.

p.s. Doesn't news like this really make these lame techie arguments seem so childish and trivial?

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