TOOLS

When the struggle for democracy recharged itself in Iran a few weeks ago, after 30 years of repression, many Iranians living abroad flew to their computer screens to get a taste of what was going on inside. The bloody murder of Neda Agha-Soltan, the vast protests on the streets and in the towns, and the assault of the Basij militia upon students were suddenly visible to the rest of the world, and all credit is due to mini amateur phone lenses documenting the crisis. Mobile platforms have already influenced the aftermath of the presidential election and may have forever changed the tide of Iranian politics. But still, the government isn’t standing idly by.

In recent weeks, Iran moved into first place to tie with China as the world’s biggest prison for journalists. Some forty journalists are behind bars without being charged with any crime. These harsh crackdowns hit cyberspace, Iranian satellites, and all foreign news broadcasts. Some say without Twitter and other online social networking machinery, Nedamyrights would not have mobilized a global movement of expat Iranians, the previously silent, hyphenated ones like myself, to demand justice and a free Iran.

As Mark Pfeifle, former Deputy National Security Advisor for strategic communication and global outreach at the National Security Council stated this week:

“Neda became the voice of a movement; Twitter became the megaphone. Twitter became a window for the world to view hope, heroism, and horror.”  Pfeifle went on to recommend that Twitter be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Pfeifle is not alone in acknowledging Twitter’s significance.  I spoke with Farhan Haq, in the UN Secretary-General’s Spokesperson’s office and he said the UN is gradually coming to recognize the importance of Twitter and online social networking tools in garnering support for injustice and the clampdown of freedom of expression:

“The UN greatly supports freedom of expression, and the tools/technology to promote these freedoms, anytime. We want to ensure the activities of Iranian people and the peaceful protests in Iran are not hindered in any way. The UN Secretary-General spoke to Shirin Ebadi two weeks ago about working together to better support the will of the people in Iran. The UN has in recent months been using Twitter as a means for spreading information. A most recent example is the selection of the new Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). During the voting campaign, results were twittered out to the global community on a daily basis.”

Some, however, have cast doubt on the role of Twitter in disseminating information and fostering political participation.  Trita Parsi, Director of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) remarked:

“SMS text messaging was the most critical in maintaining channels of communication between Iranians in Iran. Twitter’s role has been exaggerated somewhat, and journalists have been calling what’s going on in Iran the Twitter Revolution because it is a nice sound bite.”

Parsi says people in the country are talking about Facebook more than Twitter because of the thousands of amateur videos Iranians were able to post on Facebook with such swiftness.  Parsi admits all forms of social networking tools remain critical to documenting injustices inside Iran, but some, he believes, such as Youtube and Twitter, were not as competitive as Facebook and SMS. He also emphasized that while US-housed social networking tools were an essential part of the coverage, some U.S. companies also supported the muzzling of the press.

“There were severe U.S. sanctions that were imposed by Microsoft MS chat on Iran a few weeks before the election. Facebook was also planning to sign onto the sanctions, but reconsidered.”

The technology giant Microsoft announced in May, just weeks before the election, that it was disabling the program’s availability in Cuba, Syria, Iran, Sudan and North Korea to come into compliance with a U.S. ban on transfer of licensed software to embargoed countries. Dharmesh Mehta, director of Windows Live Product Management at the Redmond, Washington-based company, said: “Microsoft supports efforts to ensure that the Internet remains a platform for open, diverse and unimpeded content and commerce.”

As an Iranian-American victim of Facebook’s disabling tactics, I am also not sure that Facebook has been so open inside Iran. The Iranian government blocked Facebook services in the country prior to, during, and following the elections with the objective of thwarting voters from promoting opposition candidates. Whether Facebook voluntarily complied with the Iranian government’s crackdown is unclear.

While Pfeifle argues,  “Without Twitter, the world might have known little more than a losing candidate and the people of Iran would not have felt empowered and confident to stand up for freedom and democracy,” Parsi and others point to the Iranian people as the ones truly deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize. Shirin Ebadi, a Nobel Laureate and Human Rights Lawyer in Iran, has been a pivotal leader in this election upheaval. She and other human rights activists have demanded the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-Moon hire an independent envoy to investigate human rights crimes committed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards on innocent and unarmed Iranian civilians these past few weeks.  If justice emerges out of the current debacle, it will require the courageous responses of people like Shirin Ebadi and institutions like the UN.

There is no doubt Twitter, like the other social networking technologies have changed the way the world views and engages in politics. But they are merely tools, capable of both furthering and endangering democracy, depending on how they are used.  Ultimately it is up to the people to bring about change. Whether by a shout, protest, fist pump, or tweet.