Posts Tagged ‘ Iran ’

Social Media and Networks, A Follow-Up

4 October 2010

With a new Facebook movie out, documentaries and conferences revolving around Twitter, and recent theories on how 26-year-old Mark Zuckerberg will take over the world, I was a little more than pleased when I read Malcolm Gladwell’s recent New Yorker piece, “Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted,” on how social media has not and will not revolutionize citizen action. It echoed my discontent with the so-called social activists heralding a new era of political protest during the Iranian elections. A good point to remember (and to apply) to other situations is how hard it is to look from outside a bubble when you’re encapsulated within it yourself. That is, it is difficult to conceive of a tweet not having as much social worth as you think because you are invested in it as a crucial networking tool. In addition to that, we are restricted by our own limitations–language, personal biases, and limits on information dissemination topping the list. How many of us read non-English tweets that disagree with our own political and social views? A well written argument by Gladwell, but like all his writing, imperfect. Gladwell also touched upon the inherent flaws in “networks,” in which

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The Iranian Election Through Colored Glasses

23 June 2009

First, Twitter did not revolutionize citizen protests.  If anything, it made for lazy journalism, wherein reporters and journalists spend time reading what other people have tweeted than providing their own analysis of the situation. It should be known that Iran still remains a vastly opaque country, with information becoming even more muddled as the Iranian government shuts down many communication services and blocks web access. Just today, reports of the Obama Administration scrambling for reliable information made the news. While Twitter has provided breaking, up-to-the-minute news about what’s going on in Iran, is the source to be trusted? You have to wonder who on the “other side” is reporting. There have been many false reports of protest traps, Mousavi under house arrest, and election results . Additionally, there has also been speculation that Iranian hardliner elites are manipulating the protests to “hoist themselves back into power.” Just like any other news source, you cannot take what you read at face value. What Twitter, YouTube, and 24-hour news syndicates have proven, though, is that media is very saturated in the average computer-user’s life. Thus, the repeated news stories from citizen journalists, bloggers, and reporters lead us to believe that much more

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