On 12 June 2009, the 10th Iranian
presidential election was held. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the elections and
secured his second term against runner up Mir-Hossein Mousavi. The official, but
rather disputed, vote tally showed that Ahmadinejad had managed to secure
24.5 million votes (62.6%), while his opponent managed only 13.2 million
votes (33.7%). In the wake of this election, there were two uprisings; the
major and more impactful one was by the Iranian people who demanded a vote
recount. The second uprising was a more virtual one, an uprising on social
media that saw thousands of people from around the world show solidarity with
the Iranian people.
In the aftermath of the election, millions
believed that their vote was never counted or ignored. The state prevented
free press, silenced activists and attempted to put an end to rebellious actions
thus actively engaged in a violent suppression of the voices of the people.
The end result was the death of anywhere between 36 and 150 people depending
on the source and an estimated 4000 people arrested.
Supporters
went to the streets to express their anger and rage against the announced
results, which they considered fraudulent and deceptive. While we consider
them taking to the street as a very normal behavior against election
fraudulence, what was quite unexpected and surprising is the extent to which
the Iranians used social media and even more was the success they found
moving from local to global support.
This
was the first time that social media was used in Iran in order to communicate
with people from around the world, for the purpose spreading information and
awareness about the ongoing protests in the country. Not only did they update
people around the world about their demonstration but also, they allowed
people around the world to comment on what they read and saw. Iranians used
various social media services such as: Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, youtube,
and Wikipedia as a tool to counter the heavily censored and government
controlled
Iranian
state media. The main purpose of this book is to narrate the story of the
Iranian people during their demonstrations and how social media played a
great role in it. So, it is relatively a descriptive book rather than
analytical. Even though it is descriptive, it shows how social media supports
people’s demonstrations. The book is suitable for undergraduate and graduate
students, in addition for those who seek any information about the
development of Iranian society since 1979. Furthermore, it is useful for
students of political science, social media and communication, sociology and
gender studies.
Based
on the #iranelection on Twitter, one can say that it is the first times in
modern history to see a hashtag for a political event go viral all over the
world. The hashtag was also predominant inside Iran as well; people were
using it on various social media sites to inform each other about what is
going inside the country. People from around the world showed their supported
Iranians in what became known as the Green Revolution. Just as one motto was
used for the protests, ‘Where is my vote?’ the hashtag was used in an attempt
to unify the information uploaded to social media under one banner.
Interestingly
enough, this is the second time in modern Iranian history to see how media can
play an effective role in supporting people during their anger and rebellion
against the state. The first time was during the Islamic Revolution in 1979,
when Iranians used to listen to Khomeini speeches recorded on cassette tapes
in underground and home studios. The second time was during the 2009 green
revolution, when the Iranians used Twitter and #iranelection.
The
Iranian use of Twitter and other social media has created what was later
known as the ‘citizen journalist’. Referring to the way that regular citizens
have the ability to monitor what happens in front of their eyes, record the
event, provide information and valid sources and then transmit all this to
both the local community and on a global scale. As Mottaheda said ‘images of
masses of people filling the vast boulevards, squares, and bridges of Iranian
city space were posted to Twitter and Facebook within minutes’ (p. 3). This
situation of urgency established what Mottaheda called the sense of
simultaneity and solidarity. And one of the most effective bloody aggressions
of Iranian state was the killing of Neda Agha-Soltan, who was murdered by the
Basij, the state paramilitary. The #Neda was ‘the highest-ranking
Hashtag
on June 20, 2009, indicating tens of thousands of posts on the day of her
death’ (pp. 6–7).
What
is important here is that during 2009 Iranian demonstration our perception of
social media has changed and its uses have developed, that is, People started
to use social media in an unprecedented way to inform other people around the
world about the development of Iranian revolution and the other people around
the world used to retweet what they received and publicize it. In addition,
some of the more popular and highly influential international channels such
as CNN have changed their reporting strategy. CNN did not do much active
reporting or create original content during the revolution but what they did
instead was searching and finding information, pictures and videos online and
then rebroadcast them. This has played a very essential role in the creation
and development of what became known as citizen journalism. The year of 2009
represented a very important benchmark for the mainstream media to depend
heavily on news uploaded and posted from social media websites such as
Twitter, youtube, and Facebook. The situation has been changing since the
2009 Iranian uprisings; social media has become an essential element in
mainstream media. The mass media today depends on normal people, preferably
with some sort of smart phone and internet access, which see, witness and
report. This is a huge change from how people usually got their news from the
perspective of mainstream international news agencies. For the first time people
can now get information and news from other unaffiliated sources.
#iranelection
is a book written mainly for Western readers to understand the story of 2009 Iranian
Revolution and how the global solidarity with them motivated Iranians to show
Western societies what happened, how it happened and why it happened. ‘The
hashtag went from being a localized practice among smaller groups on Twitter
to become an international practice in writing posts more generally’ (p. 16).
Even if the revolution was oppressed by the hands of Islamic regime, the
revolution taught the world how we can use new technology, new mass media to
announce to everyone in the world about the bloody behaviours of oppressive
regimes.
On
this matter, one cannot ignore the later effective role of social media, and
the part it has played in the uprisings that took hold of several Arab
countries starting from 2010. These uprisings became known as the Arab
Spring. The vast majority of them were influenced by some sort of action
taken on social media. For example, one of the first protests that took place
on the 25th of January, 2011 in Egypt, started off as a Facebook event. The
country’s internet was mostly shut down a few days later as the protests
increased in intensity. The social media tactics of #iranelection protesters
have been successfully replicated in other countries experiencing violence
and injustice by the state.
INFORMATION,
COMMUNICATION & SOCIETY 1699
The
book is generally a description of the 2009 Iranian Revolution, but was
concluded without offering answers to some of the important questions it
raises. Some of these questions include: how important are social media in
the success of revolutions and social change? Why did the Islamic revolution
of 1979 succeed, while only depending on recorded cassettes and in the face
of opposition from the West, while the 2009 revolution failed even though it
depended on a larger array of sophisticated technologies such as Twitter and
Facebook and enjoyed global support and solidarity? Although the book does
not answer these questions directly, it definitely gives us an early
prediction about the importance of using social media in supporting people’s
demonstrations. It also provides a valuable account of the potential role of
social media in uprisings within authoritarian regimes and will be of
interest to a wide audience.
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