Before the recent revolts and riots caused by the disputed Iranian elections, I never really understood the draw of Twitter. Most people I know use it to follow the actions of celebrities, and I never really wanted to "tweet" myself, because my life isn't nearly interesting enough. But with what is going on in Iran, Twitter is literally saving lives. The Iranian government is watching the Internet trying to find people who are against Ahmadinejad and are posting pictures and stories from the streets of Iran. People are using Twitter to go around the government intervention, and so far it is working well. One of the most interesting facets about this is that because government agents are looking for the time zone settings on peoples accounts to see if they are in Iran, thousands and thousands of people are switching their account settings and personal information to pretend that they are in Iran. This mass action by the Twitter population is actually making a difference in the world, and could possibly save the lives of the courageous people posting from Iran.
For further reading- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leah-anthony-libresco/irans-revolution-will-be_b_216490.html
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Mattt, things are moving very fast and the situation is very fluid in Iran. The Iranian situation is a very good example of how these online tools can be used to organize for social action. The other side of this is they way the regime has cracked down on the technologies by turning them off (you can't text message now for example) and they've disrupted facebook and Youtube, although some people have clearly been able to find their way around this obstactles through the use of proxy servers and the like.
ReplyDeleteBut thanks for bringing in contemporary examples.