When Twittering Goes Awry
(non-copyedited version)
The Iranian election protests of 2009 provide a more serious teachable moment concerning authority and information dissemination. The background: In June 2009, Iran held a presidential election in which the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, claimed to win 62% of the vote[1]. Challenger Mir-Hossein Mousavi, a marginally reformist candidate that supports more freedom and democracy in Iran, publicly questioned the results and asked his supporters to protest non-violently[2].
Protesters took to the streets starting on June 13, 2009, and the country's sophisticated community of political (and personal) bloggers started sharing news about public assemblies — and subsequent police crackdowns. A few people posted first-person accounts on blogs and on social networks like Facebook and Twitter, as well as via SMS texting on mobile phones (before the government shut down the cellphone networks). People outside of the country picked up what was happening and shared it with their networks. News spread rapidly, especially as the police violence escalated.
In the United States, news junkies and politicos marveled at the fact that the major cable news outlets… CNN, MSNBC, FoxNews… weren't covering the election. Viewers started pressuring the networks to get on the story. On Twitter, a hashtag (a keyword to indicate what topic the tweet is covering) was created to convey unhappiness about the missing coverage, targeting CNN in particular: #CNNfail[3].
It seems the pressure worked. By the following morning, CNN and other news networks were broadcasting information about the events as they unfolded. Where they tripped up is when they started calling the events in Iran the first "Twitter revolution" and started relying heavily on social networks as sources. Ditching the familiar resources that give news outlets institutional authority… trained journalists, analysts familiar with Iranian politics, etc. journalists instead jumped on a hot, trendy bandwagon. Without verifying the accuracy of many of the reports, mainstream news organizations broadcast a host of misinformation about the events inside Iran, including how many people were protesting, who was firing on the crowds, and how many people had died.
Everyday people on social networks were susceptible to the same bandwagon mentality. The high emotional content of the information coming out of Iran drove people to share first and source later. The resulting confusion of reports being shared outside of Iran didn't necessarily lead directly to the arrest or deaths of protesters, but the proliferation of misinformation did create a mythology about the impact social networking tools actually had on serious, life-changing events inside a repressive regime. To a large extent, Iranian protesters were not using Twitter, and the cell phone network had been shut down. By perpetuating the myth that protesters were subverting a dangerous, repressive, totalitarian regime purely with shiny new technology, mainstream media and participants who shared misinformation created a dangerous situation for the next conflict, in which dissenters could mistakenly believe that these tools will save their lives on their own[4]. Technology of any kind, especially in countries run by despots, will not absolve us from responsibility for the difficult, and dangerous, work of organizing against power structures that threaten lives.
[1] Wikipedia, "Iranian presidential election, 2009," http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_presidential_election,_2009 (accessed December 12, 2009)
[2] "Ahmadinejad defiant on ‘free’ Iran poll," BBC News, June 14, 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8099115.stm (accessed December 12, 2009)
[3] Daniel Terdiman, "#CNNFail’: Twitterverse slams network’s Iran absence," CNET News, June 14, 2009, http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10264398-2.html (accessed December 12, 2009)
[4] An excellent source for deeper investigation into technology's role in the Iranian protests is a talk that Katrin Verclas, co-founder of MobileActive.org, gave for the Personal Democracy Forum network on July 9, 2009: http://personaldemocracy.com/audio/social-media-crisis-lessons-iran-election-aftermath-katrin-verclas-mobileactiveorg. Much thanks to Katrin for discussing these events in depth with me.
