Logging on to social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter in this part of the world is usually a very casual novelty. We check our inbox, scroll around to see what witty remarks our friends or co-workers have made, then log off and end our little sojourn into cyberspace to return to our more tangible lives.
But while we here in the West facebook and ”twitter” for our creative and communicative kicks, others elsewhere are using these social networking sites to mobilize for national upheaval and revolution.
Such is the case currently with hundreds of thousands of Iranians who are rallying across their country to protest the recent re-election of their ”pariah president” Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and demand a recount due to allegations of electoral fraud. Since the result of the election was announced, an international chorus of protest has swept the media, beginning (in part) with the apparently disenfranchised Iranian voters who logged on, said their piece and spread the word - with the click of a button.
Within hours, every major news source had galvanized around the first-hand accounts that poured into twitter from the voters, and the headlines began appearing everywhere. CNN, Fox, BBC, you name it, the headlines screamed the banners and picket signs of the Iranian people.
Consider the following article, which provides a good example of how the Iranian demonstrators bypassed blocked satellite channels and certain websites to get the word out:
Online Networking Tools ‘Beat Iran Censorship – Link http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2009/06/19/2009061900687.html
The most amazing thing perhaps was the speed at which their voices reached the world, and this exemplifies the power and influence that the internet wields in mainstream media. In addition, it exposes Iran as a certain society in paradox; a state ruled by a religious order under a Supreme Leader who enforces a rigid Islamic law and also a democratic republic wherein its citizens can surf the internet, vote and freely protest. A very different Iran from the one portrayed by the Bush Administration as the Axis of Evil slave-state.
Never could this kind of popular revolt be possible in a regime like North Korea.
It is interesting to note that unlike Iran, the other remaining “Axis of Evil” nation strictly forbids its people access to free information, and with it the rest of the world. In this sense it is exposing the myth that the Iran is not a democracy. As this historic event takes place across the country, it is clear that the tools of democracy are being put to amazing use in the pursuit of justice. By the people, for the people.
Another important thing that is being demonstrated is that the information monopoly exercised by mainstream news broadcasters is making way for an even more dynamic and omnipresent media force, that is the very people who are making history, spreading the word to the outside world and actually making a physical change to the circumstances they’re in.
There must be no mistake about this. As is being evidenced while you read this, the internet is proving to be a powerful tool in mobilizing a war cry into action. This kind of resourcefulness being witnessed by the Iranian people may create an interesting precedent for disgruntled voters elsewhere. Below is an excerpt from an interview with an Iranian professor that I read in a CNN article today.
“I am absolutely convinced that what we are witnessing is a turning point in the history of the Islamic Republic,” said Dr. Hamid Dabashi, professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York City.
“Even if the Islamic Republic survives this crisis, it will no longer be as it used to be,” added Dabashi.
Indeed.
What is intriguing to me is this. With the rapid global spread of online resources will too, logically at least, come the rapid global spread of change.
-BJH
Filed under: Food for Thought, Foreign Affairs, Humanity | Leave a Comment
Tags: information technology, internet, Iran, iran rally, iran revolution, online, protest, twitter, uprising
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