Digital News Report- Despite reports of Internet and phone outages, protesters in Iran have managed to take advantage of technology to update the world on what’s happening in their country. Protests have been occurring across Iran, particularly concentrated in large cities such as Tehran, since June 12th when President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won re-election with over 62% of the vote. The mass protests, which have also been called the “Coup of 12 June,” assert that the election was rigged and that independent reformist Mir-Houssein Mousavi should be the rightful winner.
The use of sites such as Twitter has become the dominant way for Iranians to communicate with the outside world, including pictures and video uploaded within minutes of the action. Iran’s overwhelmingly young population has utilized Twitter so heavily during the protests that the scheduled downtime for maintenance was postponed. Twitter’s blog said that it was an “important communication tool in Iran.”
Traditional media outlets have crews on the ground in Tehran but broadcast jamming, equipment confiscation, and even physical violence against journalists are beginning to be reported. BBC correspondent John Simpson was briefly arrested and some of his materials were confiscated. Al Jazeera English has also spoken out about the censorship, saying “some of the newspapers have been given notices to change their editorials or their main headlines.”
In response to the accusation of censorship, Ahmadinejad stated, “Don’t worry about freedom in Iran… Newspapers come and go and reappear. Don’t worry about it.”
Some on Twitter have uploaded pictures of destroyed computer labs at Universities and claimed that the government was responsible. Reports of Internet censorship are also coming from within Iran, including popular websites such as FaceBook. Nearly 200 protestors have been arrested thus far. A reformist politician Mohammed Reza Khatami, the brother of a former president of Iran, is among those arrested.
Protesters are also heavily utilizing Youtube to independently report on the violence and damage occurring in Tehran. Videos depicting violence at the protests as well as aftermath have flooded the video hosting website. Once such video depicts the damage at Tehran University supposedly done by riot police. Further details of the incident are unclear, though the IranRiggedElect Twitter account claimed that students were killed in the confrontation.
To follow the protests on Twitter, go to #IranElection
Or on the friend feeder.
Other popular Twitter accounts:
Change_for_Iran
ProtestorHelp
PersianKiwi
StopAhmadi
IranRiggedElect
mousavi1388
tehranelection
knv
hamednz
The Iranian Stealection is proving Twitter’s worth, http://bit.ly/UVPmW.