Opinion: Twitter in Iran: A partner in protest?

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

Twitter is the bane of the print generation, a tribute to cultural self-absorption that New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd calls ‘a toy for bored celebrities and high-school girls.’ As she put it in a recent interview with Twitter’s two founders, ‘I would rather be tied up to stakes in the Kalahari Desert, have honey poured over me and red ants eat out my eyes than open a Twitter account.’

Now Twitter is being credited with helping protesters in Tehran and other Iranian cities demonstrate in the streets against the flawed election that kept Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in power. Even Hillary Clinton‘s State Department asked Twitter not to shut down for routine maintenance to avoid disrupting messages.

President Obama is walking a tightrope on Iran -- wanting to support democracy without handing the real power in Iran -- the ayatollahs -- a chance to brand the protests as the work of American agitators. In remarks he made with South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak at his side the other day, you can hear the conflict in his position:

It’s not productive, given the history of U.S.-Iranian relations, to be seen as meddling -- the U.S. president meddling in Iranian elections. What I will repeat and what I said yesterday is that when I see violence directed at peaceful protesters, when I see peaceful dissent being suppressed, wherever that takes place, it is of concern to me and it’s of concern to the American people.

That is not how governments should interact with their people. And my hope is, is that the Iranian people will make the right steps in order for them to be able to express their voices, to....

...express their aspirations. I do believe that something has happened in Iran where there is a questioning of the kinds of antagonistic postures toward the international community that have taken place in the past, and that there are people who want to see greater openness and greater debate and want to see greater democracy.

How that plays out over the next several days and several weeks is something ultimately for the Iranian people to decide. But I stand strongly with the universal principle that people’s voices should be heard and not suppressed.
As the White House steps gingerly on the issue, Twitter, the micro-blogging site with a 140-character (the original version said 140-word) limit on messages -- has stepped up to grab the attention. Admittedly, the fact that users can tweet from their cellphones as well as their computers makes it difficult for the Iranian regime to block access. But is it fair to credit the American social-networking site with playing a role in a potential revolution?

Evgeny Morozov, a blogger for Foreign Policy Magazine, notes that the real work of Twitter has been to empower citizen-journalists at a time when mainstream media reporters can’t get to the scene.

‘We saw quite a few citizen journalists doing an excellent job of taking photos and videos of protests in Tehran almost in real time,’ he said in a recent online chat. ‘They have, indeed, filled an important niche.’

Others note that protesters are using Twitter to communicate not only rally times but also conditions. ‘My friends are being held against their will in the university,’ wrote one. ‘Rasoul Akram hospital has medics outside, go there for help,’ advised another.

The Web communications have not been confined to Twitter. Some pictures and videos of police violence have been uploaded to sites such as Flickr and YouTube.

Not everyone’s convinced that social networks actually are abetting the protests. Mehdi Yahyanejad, manager of a Farsi-language news site based in Los Angeles, said most of the Twittering about Iran is happening outside its borders. ‘Twitter’s impact inside Iran is zero,’ he told the Washington Post. ‘Here, there is lots of buzz, but once you look ... you see most of it are Americans tweeting among themselves.’

Let us know what you think.

-- Johanna Neuman

Click here to get Twitter alerts on each new Ticket item. Or follow us @latimestot