Deanna Zandt on WRHU: Iranian elections, social media and more

First, from an American media perspective, here was another great moment for folks to demand what they wanted to see covered on national news media. What a moment of media dissonance: As protests erupted — and in some cases, turned violent –  in the streets of Tehran and elsewhere in Iran, major broadcast media in the US had little to no news on the events at all. By using the hashtag¹ #CNNfail to collect all of the dissatisfaction on Twitter, Americans were able to shift the focus of the conversation and eventually influence CNN’s decision makers to start covering stories by Sunday.

It’s reminiscent of #AmazonFAIL (when Amazon accidentally delisted 58,000 books, fueling a social media revolt), in the sense that within a pretty short timeframe (less than 24 hours), major news organizations simply could not ignore the story unfolding — via reportage and commentary — on social media. I remind folks to think about how this sort of situation would have unfolded even five years ago: Bloggers would blog, perhaps media watchdog organizations would get a grassroots campaign together, and maybe within a week, if we were lucky, we’d see some influence. Now, with so many people participating in the conversation, we have immense power to quickly shift both focus and perception.

This is why, when it comes to politics and advocacy work, it’s important to look at a bigger picture beyond just who’s using Facebook to get votes, or which representatives of governments tweet with pizazz. It’s less about celebrity and more about connection, humanity and the ability to inject our values into the wider culture in a fundamentally populist way.

Another fascinating angle of this story is the bootstrapping of access to technology after the Iranian government began blocking access. Facebook was blocked in late May, when reformist candidate Moussavi had around 5,200 supporters. Not long into the protests this weekend, access to major portions of the Internet (including Twitter), as well as SMS texting, were blocked. Not to be stopped, protesters within Iran are receiving information about accessing proxy servers from folks setting them up outside of the country, and stories continue to flood out.

Honestly, there is just no blocking The Internet, y’all. What the Iranian government is trying to do is, in effect, akin to trying to stop water or electricity from flowing. There is so much infrastructure in place at this point, they’d basically have to blow up most of it to stop people from accessing the outside world. Of course, I wouldn’t put it past Ahmadinejad, now that I think about it…

–

¹ What’s a hashtag? It’s a keyword that people add to their tweets, so that conversations around a particular topic can be easily tracked.

Friends, colleagues, New Yorkers, Americans:

Below is a call that went out earlier in the week for us all to gather at Wall Street tomorrow (Thursday) at 4pm to protest the inanity of the $700 billion bailout. Seven. Hundred. Billion. Dollars. For what? For them to screw up again and rob us blind? Please!

My big question in all of this is: who’s going to bail out Main Street? What happens to the over a million people with foreclosed homes this year alone?

And hey, I’ve got a buncha useless crap around that I could use some money for– thanks to the folks over at BuyMyShitpile.com, there’s an idea to bring it all down to Bowling Green and see if there are takers. Even WIRED Magazine is in on the fun: http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/09/outrage-online.html

So, heed the call– the unions, the grassroots organizations, the media… everyone’s in on this one. Come on down. Bring friends. Forward this on. I’ll see yas there. Full details below.

————

This week the White House is trying to push through the biggest financial theft in world history with nary a stitch of debate. They're asking for a blank check for over 1 trillion dollars to bail out George Bush's Wall Street cronies who created this economic crisis in the first place.

If this passes, we can forget about any money for environmental protection, to counter global warming, for education, for national health care, to rebuild our decaying infrastructure, for alternative energy.

This is a historic moment. We need to act now while we can influence the debate.

Let's rally against this bailout in the heart of the financial district! Gather at 4pm, this Thursday, Sept. 25 in the plaza at the southern end of Bowling Green Park, which is the small triangular park that has the Wall Street bull at the northern tip.

What: Say NO to the Wall Street bailout
When: Thursday, September 25: 4pm
Where: Southern end of Bowling Green Park, in the plaza area, by the bull statue
What to bring: Banners, noisemakers, signs, leaflets, etc.

Do whatever you can for this historic event and contact all your groups and friends. This proposed financial bailout is without precedent and we have to stop it!

Since Wall Street is asking us to give them money for their worthless investments, some folks are planning to bring their OWN junk to Wall Street and see if they'll buy it. Bring your collectible mugs and limited edition Thomas Kinkade prints and add ‹“em to the pile! This action inspired by Buy My Shitpile – (http://www.buymyshitpile.com/)