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Iran: Downside to the “Twitter Revolution” Dissent Fall 2009:Dissent, rev.qxd 9/5/2009 11:49 AM Page 10 COMMENTS AND OPINIONS Iran: Downside to the “Twitter Revolution” EVGENY MOROZOV blocks, making the country ripe for a tech - nology–driven protest movement.” Whether technology was actually driving the protests remains a big unknown. It is certainly a Among the unpleasant surprises that awaited theory that many in the West find endearing: Barack Obama’s administration during the who would have expected that after decades of post-election turmoil in Iran, the unexpected blasting propaganda from dedicated radio and role of the Internet must have been most television channels, Americans would be able to rankling. A few government wonks might support democracy in Iran via blogs and social have expected Iranians to rebel, but who could networks? Nice theory, but it has very little predict they would do so using Silicon Valley’s basis in reality; in fact, it is mostly American— favorite toys? Team Obama, never shy to tout rather than Iranian—bloggers who are culpable its mastery of all things digital, was caught off for blowing the role of technology out of any guard and, at least for a moment or two, reasonable proportion. Andrew Sullivan, who appeared ill-informed about the heady devel - was tirelessly blogging about the events in opments in Iranian cyberspace. Speaking a few Tehran for the Atlantic , emerged as one of the days after the protests began, Secretary of few comprehensive one-stop shops for real-time State Hillary Clinton confessed that she updates from Iran (or, to be more precise, from wouldn’t know “a Twitter from a tweeter, but the Iranian Internet). Sullivan (and the apparently, it’s very important”— referring to Huffington Post‘s Nico Pitney) made a signif - Twitter, a popular mix between a blogging icant contribution to how the rest of the service and a social network that enables its media—cut off from access to the streets of users to exchange brief messages of up to 140 Tehran and unable to navigate the new media characters in length. maze as effectively as well-trained bloggers— While Clinton’s response must have pacified portrayed the protests. It was Sullivan who aging American diplomats, uneasy about the famously proclaimed “The Revolution Will Be prospect of attending new-media workshops to Twittered” and called Twitter “the critical tool bolster their Internet expertise, it didn’t really for organizing the resistance in Iran.” If Iran’s comport with the popular narrative of events Twitter Revolution needs a godfather, Andrew unfolding in Tehran, at least not the one Sullivan has the best credentials in town. constructed by the U.S. media. This narrative It is easy to see why so many pundits had come to be known as “Iran’s Twitter accepted this narrative: they had seen some - Revolution.” In the first days after the protests, thing similar before. The exultant hordes of it was hard to find a television network or a attractive, obstreperous young people, armed newspaper (never mind the blogs) that didn’t with fax machines and an occasional Xerox run a feature or an editorial extolling the role of copier, taking on the brutal dictators—and Twitter in fomenting and publicizing the Iranian winning: that already happened twenty years protests. The modish take of the usually sober ago, and the venue was Eastern Europe. The Christian Science Monitor is representative of the parallels with Iran were too striking to resist. heavily skewed coverage: “The government’s “Tehran’s ‘collective action cascade’ of 2009 tight control of the Internet has spawned a feels like Leipzig 1989,” tweeted Clay Shirky, generation adept at circumventing cyber road - new media’s favorite cheerleader, who is 10 DISSENT FALL 2009 Dissent Fall 2009:Dissent, rev.qxd 9/5/2009 11:49 AM Page 11 COMMENTS AND OPINIONS always au courant with latest trends. In an can’t read the language and have limited infor - interview with TED.com, Shirky claimed that mation to work with. “[Iran’s] is the first revolution that has been Of course, they can still guess the nature and catapulted onto a global stage and transformed direction of the local conversations; their “cheat by social media.” However, as Mahmoud sheet” consists of following bilingual bloggers, Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Ali Khameini, who write in both their native language and who were, perhaps, even more surprised by English, and subscribing to blog aggregators like the high-tech protests than Obama, began Global Voices Online, which purport to their ruthless crackdown, the hopes of another aggregate interesting conversations happening “velvet revolution” quickly faded away, and in non-English environments. The most curious virtually all pundits, including Sullivan, cured and demanding could also use various machine themselves of their Twitter obsession almost as translation tools that translate blogs from, say, rapidly as they had developed it. Tehran— Farsi to English. Some laud the emergence of caught up now in a bloodcurdling Stalinist this new media ecosystem: at what other point show trial—had successfully deflected the in history did we have a chance to tap directly Twitter threat, and the revolutionary spirit had into the thought process of young Iranians? It been whittled down. What seemed like Leipzig was the dwindling tribe of foreign correspon - in 1989 was beginning to resemble Beijing of dents that used to find those people for us and the same year. make them leading characters of their periodic, offbeat “Letter from...” dispatches. Today, the argument goes, we should thank Twitter for So, what to make of Iran’s Twitter Revolution? allowing us to follow them on a daily basis and Has it upended any of our assumptions about in real time and—here is the punch line—to the political power of the Internet? Plenty of follow all of them, finally unshackling ourselves skeptics think it was just a myth, dreamed up from the inherent biases of cigar-smoking and and advanced by cyber-utopian Western Martini-sipping white men. commentators, who finally got a chance to In reality, however, this new media eco- prove that the billions of hours that humanity system is very much like the old game of wastes on Twitter and Facebook are not spent in “Telephone,” in which errors steadily accu - vain. Critics counter that the failure of the mulate in the transmission process, and the Twitter Revolution doesn’t mean that new final message has nothing in common with the media didn’t play an important role in it. By original. Judging by the flawed media coverage bashing Twitter, we are blinding ourselves to of the events in Tehran, the game never the looming age of cheap and effective Internet- sounded more Iranian. Thus, to blame Andrew powered protests that will soon extirpate all Sullivan for first dreaming up the “Twitter forms of authoritarianism. Revolution,” we have to blame a bevy of On first examination, the former charge has English-speaking Iranian bloggers who had some merit. It is, indeed, quite easy to dismiss shaped his opinion (many of them from the the Twitter Revolution as a product of the wild Iranian diaspora, with strong pro-Western imagination—or, perhaps, the excessive feelings—why else blog in English?), as well as optimism—of our self-anointed Internet gurus Farsi-speaking bloggers in Tehran who had and visionaries. Many of them do offer superb shaped the opinion of the English-speaking analysis of technology’s role in national affairs. Iranians, and so forth. Factor in various political But they invariably flounder when it comes to biases, and it becomes clear that what Andrew analyzing technology’s role in global politics, Sullivan is “seeing” might be radically different offering a very parochial and superficial analysis from what is actually happening. of the situation. This is one subject area where The traditional media, banned from they are severely inhibited by their lack of reporting from Tehran (and, in many cases, familiarity with foreign Internet cultures. unable to finance their stay there anyway), Knowing something about local politics is not have to feed off the bloggers rather than do enough to understand the role that the Internet their own reporting or sift through thousands of plays in a given context. Moreover, they often often apocryphal posts from unknown writers. FALL 2009 DISSENT 11 Dissent Fall 2009:Dissent, rev.qxd 9/5/2009 11:49 AM Page 12 COMMENTS AND OPINIONS This only amplifies the noise. Thus, it’s hardly indeed, transformed a flashmob into a massive surprising that we are prone to see trends and rally earlier in the year. But Iran’s protests were developments that only exist in the minds of radically different; unlike Moldova, it had a our local interlocutors. Learning from foreign well-organized opposition that was expecting blogs is a long and tedious process; it is largely the election to be rigged and was prepared to useless in times of a crisis—who has time to take action. That the Iranian opposition would read and translate blog posts when people are venture into Twitter territory to deliberate dying in the streets?—so it’s quite logical that about the best venue for its next march is Twitter, with its 140 character limit and its cult ridiculous, not only because it seems pointless of immediacy, has emerged as a key source of (after all, the Bolsheviks didn’t have to use news and updates from Tehran. It is, indeed, a deliberative polling to choose the Winter Palace great shortcut to viewing the photos, videos, or as their target) but because the Iranian secret text updates from the Iranian streets that services would probably read these deliberations resurface on our favorite blogs a few hours before anyone else did—and then take later.
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