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Bypassing Iran Censorship Through Social Media

June 18th, 2009 by Erin Posted in Twitter | 1 Comment »

The face of social media changed this month.

Twitterers. YouTube watchers. Flickr glazers went to their prospective sites not for work or leisure – but to get involved with a powerful, hot-bedded election in Iran.

This election was supposed to ignite – and implement – a revolution. A “green revolution”.

Alas, that did not happen.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad beat Mir-Houssein Mousavi with 63% of the vote.

Mousavi supporters cried fowl, claiming the election results were tampered.

The world watched. Listened. Then got involved.

On June 13, the day after the election and Western journalists were sent packing, Iran saw the writing on the wall and pulled the plug on all Internet traffic. For 45 minutes there was no way to access the web through Iran’s only telecom company – Data Communications of Iran (DCI).  When service did resume, it was at a very low level – and remains so to this day. DCI also tried to cleverly throttle back the total amount of Internet data entering or a leaving the country, installing new filtering systems that block politically sensitive websites.

Twitter. YouTube. Flickr. All of them were unscathed.

And so began this new chapter in the life of social media – a sidestep to censorship.

When enraged Mousavi supporters couldn’t make their voices heard around the world – social networks did the talking for them. Cell phone snapshots, text messages, and incredible videos were uploaded and shared on these Web services  - essentially undoing what the Iranian government thought was an iron-clad spin control plan.

Word of the violence unfolding in Iran, restrained by just 140 characters, spread like wildfire on Twitter. We received minute-by-minute updates and images; an unprecedented turn of events considering the lack of information we were receiving from traditional television news sources.

Now as the dust begins to settle, it’s time for us to step back and take a look – and appreciate – what the Internet has now become: a real time voice for the world.

Imagine how we would have seen 9/11 unfold through today’s social media?

Or how about the fall of the Berlin Wall?

Or when Saddam Hussein was captured in 2003?

Now, sit back and think about what we’ll likely see in the future.

Kind of tough to wrap your head around, isn’t it?

This is obviously just the beginning of something big – very big.

 Tags: election in iran, iran censorship, twitter iran