I feel like I'm probably not the only one that is going to be doing this topic as it seems to fit the blog question very well. The 2009 Iranian elections in which sitting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won re-election even after all the national polls showed his rival the clear favorite. When the results came in, Ahmadinejad won a landslide 62% of the votes to Mir-Hossein Mousavi's 37%.
After these results, there were protests in the streets, where many citizens used their mobile phones to take photos and video of the police attacking protesters and shooting tear gas into the crowds.
Although there is a public display of democracy with Iran, it is widely seen as a dictatorship due to the amount of control that the government has over it's citizen's lives. The Iranian government controls Internet access and censors the traffic coming in and out of the country. However, the protesting citizens were able to get around this by using Twitter to post information to the web, detailing the violence and government brutality towards it's people. Iranians were able to upload photos and video which were the only sources of information out of the country which were picked up on by the global media.
Large news networks used this Twitter-based reporting and mobile phone video to show the world what was happening and how the Iranian government is oppressing it's people. This is a great example of how the Government can't control everything, and that they weren't able to keep up with new media and technology. With the rapid evolution of mobile technology, everyone now has the ability to be their own news reporter, taking mobile video and photos and uploading them on the spot.
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I thought about doing this topic, but then I switched to another topic. I completely agree with everything you said. Internet activism is being made more powerful by always-emerging technology and social networks. Cellphones can communicate in real-time with facebook and twitter. Pictures and videos can be immediately posted right after being snapped by someone's phone. No country with any type of government can stop this now, no matter how much the government censors outgoing media. I don't see why the Iranian government even tries to do what they do. The rest of the world will always find out about what's happening in the country. Iran is certainly not the only country that tries to hide things. You have North Korea as well as others that think they can pull the wool over the rest of the worlds' eyes. New technology sure makes internet activism virtually unstoppable.
ReplyDeleteI agree that what Iran is faces is a dictatorship. What else could you call it. Their government won't let the people do anything to challenge the government in any way. However, the people are smart, want democracy, and know how to use technology to show who's really right in this situation. Good post and very focused to what was expected of this blog assignment, Neil!