With media blackouts and even cell phone service disrupted, American news agencies are a-twitter about… well, Twitter. The live feed of information from Iranian citizens certainly offer a compelling look at the internal issues Iran is facing – enough that the State Department asked the microblogging service not to shut their site down for routine maintenance. (If they could only get rid of the fail whale…)
This is a big democratization movement indeed, but maybe not in Iran. Lost in the assumptions of a stolen election is the compelling possibility that Mahmoud Ahmedinejad actually won – or that the outcome of the election would not result in much of a policy shift, anyway.
Much more indicative of lasting change is the way Twitter allowed some in the US to pick up on the upheaval in Iran despite more traditional media services being a bit slow on the uptake. The real change that comes out of Tehran may be in how the media get the news they pass on to us.
Jim Eltringham 