Irate Iranians turn to Twitter
The #iranelection pulled a massive crowd and became the latest example of social media journalism
Last week’s controversial Iranian election saw much journalist activity banned. Iranian citizens turned to Twitter, the micro-blogging site, to express their outrage at perceived misconduct by authorities.
A #iranelection search on Twitter will show hundreds of posts appearing every few minutes summarizing public opinion and giving up to the minute details of protests.
Twitter was even asked by the American Government to put off a scheduled closure of the site to give the Iranian people a chance to have their voice heard. Proxy servers are also being used to access the site via America. These forms of access are being publicised by several Twitter celebrities such as Stephen Fry.
The Guardian have today reported on their online coverage of the Iranian elections and the choice they made to protect all associated citizen journalists.
The Guardian’s Matthew Weaver posted on his liveblog, saying “My bosses have decided to err on the side of caution and not link to Twitter updates from Iran for now”, after receiving messages saying the website was putting lives at risk due to Iranian authorities being able to see civilians’ updates.
Disturbing mobile phone footage of a woman dying in a pool of her own blood was also uploaded to video website, YouTube.
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Categories: Latest, New campaigns
Jul 29th, 2009 at 11:03 am
[...] Well, dont expect Twitter to be any different- it’ll still be functioning in exactly the same way with the user driving the experience-but now Twitter has moved its goal to being all about ‘you’ to being about the world. Could this be due to its increasing use as a platform for citizen journalism? [...]