[A-List] America's Iranian Twitter Revolution

[Tony B.]

You've completely missed the point...the 'twitter revolution' isn't directed 
at, isn't about Iranians...its propaganda directed at *us*. More to point, 
it's simply about *propaganda*...a propaganda campaign you seem all to 
willing to buy into and participate in.

Tony


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Leighm" <the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com>
To: "The A-List" <a-list at lists.econ.utah.edu>
Sent: Saturday, June 27, 2009 8:46 PM
Subject: Re: [A-List] America's Iranian Twitter Revolution


> So much blah blah... Just because every Iranian doesn't have internet 
> access it's somehow counter-revolutionary blah blah.
>
> Neither do many Americans... So, by extension, everyone on this list is 
> somehow counter-revolutionary.
>
> ...or erhaps, we're just 'exceptional' (snicker)
>
> Blah blah... stasis passing for political thought.
>
> Yawn.
>
>
>
> Tony B. wrote:
>>
>> America's Iranian Twitter Revolution
>>
>> http://openanthropology.wordpress.com/2009/06/17/americas-iranian-twitter-revolution/
>>
>> America's Iranian Twitter Revolution
>> 2009 June 17
>> tags: ahmadinejad, CIA, Hezbollah, iran, iranelection, Iranian elections, 
>> Israel, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mossad, Tehran, tweet, twitter, twitter 
>> revolt, twitter revolution
>> by Maximilian Forte
>>
>> Which Revolution?
>>
>> If the headlines had spoken of a "Twitter revolution in Canada," a North 
>> American society with very widespread broadband Internet access, and 
>> almost complete Internet penetration, and one of the highest rates of 
>> personal computer ownership, one would have still needed to be very 
>> skeptical: 74% of Canadians surveyed have never even heard of Twitter, 
>> and only 1.45% of Canadians actually use Twitter, most of those being 
>> young, professionals, or in universities - as an active Canadian Twitter 
>> user, I am part of a minuscule minority ("74% of Canadians unaware of 
>> Twitter: online survey," CBC News, 11 June 2009). The only Twitter 
>> revolution there could be in such a context then, is for anyone beyond 
>> that minority to actually use it - let alone challenge or transform an 
>> entire political system based on its use. That is not just true of Canada 
>> either: according to a study done by the Harvard Business School, only 
>> 10% of Twitter users generate more than 90% of Twitter content ("10% of 
>> Twitter users generate over 90% of content, study finds," CBC News, 5 
>> June 2009). A real Twitter revolution would be one that transcends the 
>> hype and Twitter self-promotion and sees most users generating the 
>> content.
>> While some, like Clay Shirky, will proclaim regarding this so-called 
>> "Twitter revolution in Iran," that "this is it, this is the big one" 
>> (thanks to Anthropology.net) the "it" and the "one" are what are most in 
>> doubt. Yet it is doubt that is most absent from the analyses that have 
>> been hastily proffered - and when skepticism is absent from analysis, 
>> what are we left with? Hype, promotional propaganda, wishful thinking - a 
>> rush to the headline-grabbing punchline. Shirky thinks the whole world is 
>> watching, and he may be right, but he is wrong about Twitter and other 
>> social media.
>>
>> This is indeed a "revolution".but it's for Twitter, this entity whose 
>> very existence resembles the classic story of the start up from the last 
>> dot com bust of the late 1990s, a "Bubble 2.0? firm operating in a 
>> recession no less, without ever producing a business plan, and yet 
>> getting $20 million here and $30 million there in financing (see this, 
>> this, this, and that). Twitter may be as irrelevant to Iran as it is good 
>> for the promotion of Twitter itself, and for the self-flattery of some 
>> ardent Twitter users who believe that their tweets and their green-tinted 
>> avatars will change the world, or at least Iran. The revolution will not 
>> only be tweeted, it will be fast and easy, and it will be led by 
>> Americans themselves, "for Iran".
>>
>> As part of my preparation for this article, I not only actively followed 
>> and participated in three of the Iranian election streams on Twitter, 
>> from 13 June (the day after Iran's elections) to this morning, 17 June, I 
>> also collected a sample of 1,280 tweets, and skimmed all of the tweets 
>> about the Iranian election starting from 13 June. Among the statements 
>> praising Twitter, and the ways of using Twitter to "show support for the 
>> Iranian people", I have collected these as representative examples:
>>
>> RT Huffington Post: "Iran's Revolution Will Be Twittered (and Blogged and 
>> YouTubed and.)"
>> The revolution will be tweeted
>> WOW, Twitter is awesome!!!
>> Yep Twitter Owns! #cnnfail #iranelection
>> astounding what twitter has done with #iranelection
>> thinks Twitter's role in the #IranElection could be historical
>> thankyou twitter
>> We're getting more news from social media than from traditional media. 
>> Social intelligence progress!
>> facinating [sic] how twitter brings real time accounts of events
>> It is pretty easy being green. Turn Your Twitter Avatar Green To Show 
>> Solidarity with People of Iran
>> My Twitter photo has gone GREEN in support of the freedom revolution of 
>> #IranElection
>> None of the Twitter users who made those statements are among even the 
>> allegedly Iranian Twitter users, and all except for one locate themselves 
>> in the U.S., the other in Canada.
>> Whose Revolution?
>>
>> Yet, some would have us believe that there is a "Twitter revolution" 
>> going on in Iran, when there is no such thing. Not only that, what is 
>> being boasted about the power of Twitter is almost entirely false. What 
>> there is instead is a rush to the finish line, a predetermined conclusion 
>> to immediately thank and praise Twitter in the context of Iran's street 
>> protests.
>>
>> How representative are Iran's Twitter revolutionaries? In actual fact, 
>> the only allegedly Iranian Twitter users who have been identified by 
>> other Twitter users as tweeting about the Iranian protests, are fewer 
>> than 45 (see one list here), most of whose locations cannot be confirmed 
>> and almost all of whom post only in English. Yet, one can get as many as 
>> 2,500 updates in a single minute, on one stream alone (#iranelection), 
>> and most of that repetitive and uninformative material is not being 
>> posted by anyone except for a huge mass of American Twitter users. In 
>> total, only a third of Iranians even have Internet access (we saw in the 
>> Canadian case that Internet access does not translate into Twitter use) 
>> and, very interestingly, the youth who are most associated with the 
>> protests and with Twitter use, consist of 18-to-24-year-olds who in fact 
>> comprise "the strongest voting bloc for Ahmadinejad of all age groups" 
>> (poll).
>>
>> The Associated Press has produced a similar analysis, noting that in 
>> Iran, "Internet usage is mostly still a phenomenon of the affluent, the 
>> youth and city-dwellers - meaning Twitter and other networks are used 
>> mostly by the young and liberal - and may overemphasize their numbers 
>> while ignoring more-conservative political sentiments among the 
>> non-connected." Those interviewed by AP say that the Twitter hype is 
>> creating an illusion that Tehran is witnessing another revolution, or 
>> that Twitter even matters for Iranians. (See "Tweeting Iran: Elex news in 
>> 140 characters or less," by Rebecca Santana, Associated Press, 15 June 
>> 2009.)
>> So in this Twitter revolution, Twitter is not representative of Internet 
>> users, Internet use is not representative of a wider population, the 
>> youth are not representative of the youth, and the Iranians may not even 
>> be Iranian. Fantastic indeed, this power of "social media".
>>
>> What Are the "Revolutionaries" Saying?
>>
>> "Where is my vote?" I am not sure where the votes of the disgruntled 
>> losers of the Iranian election are, but I doubt that they are in Twitter. 
>> Perhaps this view is mistaken, perhaps the way they recast their ballot 
>> is through Twitter, and one would think that the pretty young females 
>> with makeup and jewelry cast their real ballots when they held up signs 
>> in Tehran, in English, for foreign news photographers.
>>
>> What is even less clear is whether they are saying anything much in 
>> Twitter. Some journalists think they see a "new stage in the evolution of 
>> social media," in the form of the "use of Twitter in Iran" (largely 
>> mistaking Twitter for Iran with in Iran), and even claim that 
>> "information is flooding out of the country - on Twitter" (see "Tweets 
>> from Tehran: The use of Twitter in Iran is a new stage in the evolution 
>> of social media," by Ashley Terry, Global NewsJune 15, 2009). The 
>> question we should ask ourselves is: what information and what is the 
>> nature of this "flood"?
>>
>> Personally, I have seen very little in the way of actual events being 
>> reported, and when they are, they are retweeted (repeated) hundreds of 
>> times over for almost an entire day. There is enormous volume, and little 
>> content. Hanson Hosein, director of digital media at the University of 
>> Washington, wrote "I'm having a hard time filtering through 
>> #iranelection, beyond the re-tweets and second-hand information passed 
>> around by Twitterers outside the country..We can't take [tweets] at face 
>> value. It can be quite dangerous. We should be doing as much 
>> fact-checking as possible" (source). Michael Crowley also wrote, "One 
>> thing that really bothers me about these twitters and first-hand accounts 
>> posted on blogs is that there's no way to verify them; I've seen several 
>> that either seemed suspect or turned out to be false" (source). 
>> Similarly, another blogger observed that, "If you, as an average news 
>> consumer, relied on Twitter you might believe all sorts of things had 
>> happened, which simply hadn't, running a high risk of being seriously 
>> misled about events on the ground. You might at best, have simply been 
>> confused. You probably wouldn't have thought Ahmadinejad enjoys much 
>> popular support at all" (source).
>>
>> One of the most common retweets I read, over a two-day period, was this 
>> one, sometimes with minor modifications:
>> "RT From Iran: CONFIRMED!! Army moving into Tehran against protesters! 
>> PLZ RT! URGENT!"
>> In fact, there was no army "move against" the protesters, not at the 
>> time, not before it, not even right after it. Some of the tweets seemed 
>> designed to deliberately spread misinformation, such as:
>> military is rumoured to refusing orders to shoot
>> and
>> 2 million in the streets
>> and
>> @VOA claims 5000 Lebanese Hezbollah Milita h/b brought down to Iran to 
>> help control the situation #iranelection [that particular Twitter 
>> account, remains entirely blank in actual fact]
>>
>> and
>> students being thrown from university building by police
>> and
>> IRAN: CONFIRMING 10~15 dead at dorms last night! Floors are covered w/ 
>> blood!!! (http://twitter.com/sissyto4 location: USA)
>> and
>> I have heard here that there may be a national strike in Iran on Tuesday. 
>> (said a New York twitter user)
>> Not only does Twitter allow Americans to engage in participant voyeurism, 
>> it allows them to create the "news" about Iran for Iranians themselves, 
>> and apparently making it up as they go along. Indeed, anyone can be an 
>> Iranian in Twitter, and in fact all are being encouraged to "become" 
>> Iranian as in this other vastly over-repeated tweet:
>> RT help protect Iranian tweeters by changing your timezone to GMT+3:30 
>> and location to Tehran
>> In addition, having urged all to do as above, there is a further effort 
>> to mask the identity of alleged Iranian Twitter users:
>> When re-tweeting sources from Iran please delete handler name. Type RT 
>> SOURCE from Iran #iranelection #gr88 VERY IMPORTANT!!!! Pls RT
>> The problem as we see is that when everybody is in Iran, nobody is in 
>> Iran.
>>
>> Social Media Are Better Than.?
>>
>> The last point raises the issue of how are we to value the "information" 
>> provided by this "Twitter revolt". The first problem is to get over short 
>> attention spans - this is not the first "Twitter revolt" as some in 
>> Twitter suggest. The latest, previous revolt was in Moldova, and I 
>> personally followed very closely the Greek riots through Twitter and many 
>> other media. Indeed, the #griots stream is still active, and when it was 
>> especially active in December of 2008, it featured countless links to 
>> independent media, loaded with photographs and videos, and many if not 
>> most of the tweets were in Greek - it was a Greek event, generated for 
>> Greeks and to be consumed by Greeks. Thus previously I have not had the 
>> reason for criticizing Twitter as I do now.
>>
>> There is virtually no accountability or transparency evident in this now 
>> almost mythical "Iranian Twitter Revolution," as we do not know who is 
>> where and why they are saying what they do. It is not as easy to get away 
>> with truth-creation in the mainstream media, especially when reporting 
>> from conflict zones: as has happened many times in the past, untruthful 
>> reporters claiming to be filing stories from the war zone have been 
>> unmasked by others as being nowhere in sight, or, if there, as never 
>> leaving their hotels. We cannot do that with Twitter. One Twitter user 
>> pleaded, "don't retweet anything until it's confirmed, spreading rumors 
>> will do more harm than good #iranelection" - but then, how is it 
>> confirmed? Propaganda journalism often gets unmasked; in Twitter, 
>> propaganda gets retweeted and thus remasked.
>>
>> Not only is Twitter "reporting" not more credible than the mainstream 
>> media, it is also vastly less informative. On a simple quantitative 
>> scale: add up everything that is actually reported as "news" in 
>> #iranelection, whether true or not, confirmed or not, and compare it side 
>> by side with any one article from the major wire services. I would 
>> venture that half of any one article for the day contains more 
>> information than all of the day's tweets combined. As if to confirm the 
>> relationship, many of the tweets themselves link to mainstream media 
>> sources.
>>
>> As for "social media" providing egalitarian access and voice for 
>> everyone, what is most immediately apparent from #iranelection in Twitter 
>> is the drive to silence some voices: "all users IGNORE all post except 
>> from reliable sources," said one. How do you know a source is "reliable" 
>> in Twitter? "I'm really following this closely. Fascinating watching the 
>> protests unfold" - but you are not actually watching the protests. You 
>> are entertaining an illusion in your mind that is generated by the 
>> tweets.
>> A Revolution in the American Fantasy
>>
>> It may be wrong to single out Americans here, since there is every 
>> likelihood, given the current geopolitical context, that Israeli Twitter 
>> users (among the heaviest Twitter users one can find) have a vested 
>> interest in manipulating the discussion to serve the ends of the Israeli 
>> state, as do many Americans. One thing to do is to try to foment a 
>> division between Iran and Hezbollah, thus one posted: "large number of 
>> armed forces are lebanese/arab hired to beat down the brave iranians" - 
>> completely without substance. Another Twitter user I spoke to chose to 
>> quote the Talmud to the Iranian protesters. Interestingly, the Jerusalem 
>> Post was immediately "aware" of three "Iranian" bloggers (who post only 
>> in English), almost as soon as they joined, claiming without support that 
>> their Twitter feeds were from Iran (see here and here).
>> That the U.S. government has an active interest in the unfolding of the 
>> "Twitter revolution" for Iran, is an established fact. The U.S. State 
>> Department intervened to ask Twitter to delay a scheduled maintenance 
>> break so as to not interrupt tweets about Iran - "Ian Kelly, a state 
>> department spokesman, told reporters at a briefing that he had recognized 
>> over the weekend the importance of social media 'as a vital tool for 
>> citizens' empowerment and as a way for people to get their messages out'. 
>> He said: 'It was very clear to me that these kinds of social media played 
>> a very important role in democracy - spreading the word about what was 
>> going on'" (see "US urges Twitter to delay service break," by Chris 
>> Nuttall and DanielDombey,Financial Times, 17 June 2009, and "U.S. State 
>> Department speaks to Twitter over Iran," Reuters, 16 June 2009). What the 
>> U.S. State Department is also doing, of course, is reinforcing the 
>> unproven claim that this is important to Iran, while careful not to 
>> specify whose citizens are being empowered, whose word is being spread, 
>> and "out" from where. At the same time, the Obama regime claims that it 
>> is not meddling in Iranian affaris.
>>
>> As if to close the feedback loop, some Twitter users directed messages at 
>> Obama's own Twitter account, urging him to wear a green tie "in 
>> solidarity with the Iranian people". It is interesting solidarity, given 
>> that no one has been able to show that Ahmadinejad actually lost the 
>> election, given that the entire premise for the protest is that if he 
>> won, then it must be a fraud. Not exactly top-notch analysis. (See 
>> instead, "Ahmadinejad won. Get over it," by Lynt Leverett and Hillary 
>> Mann Leverett, Politico, 15 June 2009.)
>>
>> To further close the loop between "independent" Twitter users and the 
>> American state and its foreign policy aims, instructions have been 
>> provided on how to conduct "cyberwar" against Iranian websites (source). 
>> Others try to forge an ideological link between the Iranian protesters 
>> and Twitter's American Republicans: some American Twitter conservatives 
>> inserted their #tcot tag when addressing #iranelection. Others proclaim 
>> the following:
>>
>> The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of 
>> patriots and tyrants.-Thomas Jefferson #iranelection
>> Yes we care about people outside America. It's just sometimes hard to 
>> show when the leaders of other countries keep us apart.
>> Yet none of these people cared about democracy when another of Egypt's 
>> fraudulent elections took place, seeing the arrest and torture and 
>> sometimes the murder of opposition activists. In that case, a dictator 
>> favourable to American and Israeli interests is being propped up, and 
>> "we" dutifully remain indifferent. The same indifference is likely to be 
>> shown for the upcoming Afghan elections, when perhaps once again multiple 
>> voting will occur.
>>
>> Glenn Greenwald put the situation best, and with far more discernment and 
>> perspicacity than any cheerleading Shirky, when he writes in "The 'Bomb 
>> Iran' contingent's newfound concern for The Iranian People" (Salon, 16 
>> June 2009:
>>
>> "Much of the same faction now claiming such concern for the welfare of 
>> The Iranian People are the same people who have long been advocating a 
>> military attack on Iran and the dropping of large numbers of bombs on 
>> their country - actions which would result in the slaughter of many of 
>> those very same Iranian People.  During the presidential campaign, John 
>> McCain infamously sang about Bomb, Bomb, Bomb-ing Iran.  The Wall St. 
>> Journal published a war screed from Commentary's Norman Podhoretz 
>> entitled "The Case for Bombing Iran," and following that, Podhoretz said 
>> in an interview that he "hopes and prays" that the U.S. "bombs the 
>> Iranians."  John Bolton and Joe Lieberman advocated the same bombing 
>> campaign, while Bill Kristol - with typical prescience - hopefully 
>> suggested that Bush might bomb Iran if Obama were elected.  Rudy Giuliani 
>> actually said he would be open to a first-strike nuclear attack on Iran 
>> in order to stop their nuclear program."
>>
>>
>>
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