The Iranian precedent

By Raul Colon

“I can’t imagine how a genocide like Rwanda can happen in the age of Twitter”, exclaimed former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown early in 2009. “Outlets such as Twitter and Facebook had opened the door for the information to run freely, without much government or on-site censorship. Now, thanks to this new technology, we have an open window into any event on the globe. We can have instant information of whatever is happening on the ground”. Five months later, Mr. Brown and the world got the first taste of the what many has called the ‘Instant Revolution’.

Who does not remember the gripping posts made on Twitter and Facebook during Iran’s disputed 2009 election? Thanks to an unprecedented live-feed provided by two those two unlikely outlets the world saw provocative photos, shell shocking videos and up-to-the-minute accounts of what was happening inside one of the most reclusive countries on earth.

Western media and the public in general gravitated to their TV sets or computers to watch the Iranian people expressing anger and desperation for the first time and in front of millions, on what they believe to be a ridged election result. The seeds of a new revolution could have been planted last summer and thanks to those two social networks, the world was able to see it!

Twitting don’t commence radical chance, people do. But platforms such as Facebook can be a high value asset to activists operating inside an authoritarian regime. Of course, more is needed if a revolution is actually going to happen as the case in Iran clearly demonstrated. Nevertheless, such was the magnitude of unfetter information getting outside the Iranian borders that Tehran tried to shut down the all internet access in an effort to curb what was a rapid growing movement.

A case could be made that if had not been for the death of Michael Jackson, which took the air out of all the news for more than a month, the frenetic pace in which Iranians were expressing themselves through the social networks would have continue even with Tehran’s new and tougher censorship attempts. Accordingly to several internet watch groups, the number of ‘Tweets’ a minute attached to the election of June 12 was 40 a minute. That’s forty messages of 140 or less character each 60 seconds. Facebook reported a 25 per minute, Iran-related post rate. Both were all time numbers for each of the networks. That average lasted, more or less, until the 24th.

As impressive as those figures were, they became obsolete just a few days later. On June 26th, the day the world got word of the passing of Jackson, Twitter informed that their servers registered 73 Tweets a minute relating to the King of Pop. Data for Facebook is not available. But is a good bet they also saw a ten-fold increase in their posting. Despite the amazing figures related to Jackson, they did not last. On day three, the 29th, average Tweets per minutes dropped to 25. That’s only one more than Iran-based posting (24) seventeen days after the ballots were cast.

The death of an iconic figure such as Jackson may have suffocated the news and in the process, downplayed the amount of coverage the Iranian opposition generated but it did not ‘kill’ the movement as many pundits have stipulated. In fact, Twitter and Facebook has become more than a quasi-news service. They have transformed themselves into a communication tool. Demonstrators and sympathizers routinely use both social platforms to relate critical information. In authoritarian Iran, opposition meetings are set. Speeches are crafted and even flyers are printed all thanks to Facebook or Twitter posts.

There is where the real revolution began, with the flow of information. Not only it alerted the world of what was happening, but it established a communication ‘back channel’ which has the opportunity to outlast the State’s censorship.

United State Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, ushered theses words just three days after Iran’s election. “It is increasingly difficult for an authoritarian government to maintain control of all the means of communication that are available to its citizens, and especially when -- I mean, you either have economic stagnation and backwardness, or you allow modern communications. And it makes the control of communications, by a government, extremely difficult. And frankly I think it's -- you know, it's a huge win for freedom, around the world, because this monopoly of information is no longer in the hands of the government”.
This is the real Iranian precedent.