On Monday 15th June I was watching the evening news on TV showing a peaceful demonstration against the elections’ results in Iran. However peaceful, this demonstration flared up in panic and anger when police forces started to shoot in the crowd, killing a young man.
What does Twitter say?
I went straight to my computer to find out whether twitter echoed the events. Yes, as everyone knows now, it did. Searching for "Iranian elections", I found out a number of related topics thanks to the so useful hashtag, and saved #Iranianelection as a permanent search.
Reading Iranian Elections tweets I also found out that Twitter had been planning maintenance downtime. Unfortunate timing. Many tweets were asking for the maintenance to be rescheduled in consideration of the current Iranian circumstances. Without a second thought, I re-tweeted one of these messages, identifiable with the #nomaintenance. I have not heard since of Twitter services being subject to any potential downtime.
What does the BBC do?
In the West, traditional media have acknowledged the role played by social media in the Iranian crisis. TVs broadcast footage recorded on mobile phones and posted on YouTube, whilst the BBC appeals to Iranian citizens to share their information and pictures through the BBC website.
No matter how hard not-so-democratic governments try to lock up the Internet, and ban freedom of speech from traditional media, social media have been propelled to the place of democratic essential.
As one of the tweets I read nicely put it, "with growth and fame comes social responsibility". So with the Iranian crisis, have Social Media moved on from being “just stuff shared” with friends to a level of credibility once thought to be the monopoly of traditional broadcast media? This would undoubtedly be a sign of maturity.
For an interesting timeline of Iranian events in social media, see Mashable.
