Misc

And I just looked at your link featuring Reese Erlich..

That is a great resource, thanks for posting it,Payam. I recommend that others take a look at it as well...

Reese Erlich recently spoke at UC Berkeley's "Solidarity with Iran" day, but for some reason, he didn't share these particular perspectives...

He did like to talk about how he got to sleep in a famous Iranian actress's bed (as he jokingly lamented that it was without her).... 

I'd be interested in hearing more perspectives on this...

Hi Payam,

Thanks for posting your thoughts about this, and I agree with you on many levels. We are certainly dealing with a Western narrative of the Green Movement events in Iran, one that promotes an excessively utopian vision of the Internet's and social media's capacities for/role in social change (in general and not just in Iran). Your sentiment is shared by many, and some academics are writing about this very thing.

One example is Evegny Morozov, who published an article in an online Journal "Dissent" Fall 2009 called "Iran: Downside to the "Twitter Revolution"" where he writes, 

"Whether technology was actually driving the protests remains a big unknown. It is certainly a theory that many in the West find endearing: who would have expected that after decades of blasting propaganda from dedicated radio and television channels, Americans would be able to support democracy in Iran via blogs and social networks? Nice theory, but it has very little basis in reality; in fact, it is mostly American—rather than Iranian—bloggers who are culpable for blowing the role of technology out of any reasonable proportion. Andrew Sullivan, who was tirelessly blogging about the events in Tehran for the Atlantic, emerged as one of the few comprehensive one-stop shops for realtime updates from Iran (or, to be more precise, from the Iranian Internet). Sullivan (and the Huffington Post's Nico Pitney) made a significant contribution to how the rest of the media—cut off from access to the streets of Tehran and unable to navigate the new media maze as effectively as well-trained bloggers—portrayed the protests. It was Sullivan who famously proclaimed "The Revolution Will Be Twittered" and called Twitter "the critical tool for organizing the resistance in Iran." If Iran's Twitter Revolution needs a godfather, Andrew Sullivan has the best credentials in town."

But there are several contrasting views to this...   

Some Iranian scholars have advocated for a consideration of the Internet's role in providing an alternative sphere where expression and political mobility can flourish, particularly when these are restricted in official or "real" public spheres. (Some of these scholars include: Shahram Khosravi, Masserat Amir-Ebrahimi, Babak Rahimi, Gholam Khiabany, among others).

Also, a recent article in The New York Times quoted Professor Hamid Dabashi, who specifically addresses social network's role in this Civil Rights Movement (btw, I think the West needs to quit with this rhetoric of 'Revolution')...

Hamid Dabashi says,

"In the Iranian context, social networking has made people more social than insular; while the fear in North America and Western Europe is that the same social networking is providing a false and fictive sociability in lieu of the real thing. Iranians have used the cyberspace to turn their politics of despair into a dramaturgy of hope."

The New York Times article can be found here:

//thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/11/irania...

And Hamid Dabashi's original article can be found here:

//www.socialtextjournal.org/periscope/2009/11/social-networking-and-the-making-of-a-civil-rights-movement.php 

I, myself, have witnessed a myriad amount of Iranians in the diaspora of communities in Seattle and the Bay Area whose primary means of contributing to this movement is via the Internet, whether it be by disseminating information coming from Iran to others via social networks or organizing their own events via social networks. Also, it seems to me that many young Iranian-Americans who were born in the United States or immigrated at a very early age have suddenly become "involved" in/interested in Iranian politics perhaps even for the first time, partly because of what they are gaining access to about the Green Movement via the Internet and social networks.

So, I am left slightly confused about my perspectives about this, to say in the least. Therefore, I would love to hear more opinions about this topic.

Thanks! 

Such BullShit!

It is unfortunate that some people would actually believe this nonsense. It shows how disconnected people are from reality in Iran. The idea that what is unfolding in Iran is a "Twitter Revolutions" is not only wrong, but quite stupid. I don't think 3 million people on the streets of Tehran and millions more in other large cities had access to internet, computers and twitter. This is only an idea that Western news agencies came up with and some arrogant upper middle-class Iranians find so attractive. As if by reading some messages on Facebook or Twitter and spreading them to their "friends", they are actively participating in this "twitter revolution." Wake up and smell the coffee. Iran is not made up of rich, secular, privileged bloggers. Many of them live in slums and the rural areas and they are quite religious. Stop regurgitating CNN and FOX, and get your facts straight. 

And stop watching American shows meant to entertain and maintain airheads.

Payam 

Check this out:

//therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=3941