Twitter has become central to the political crisis in Iran, where members of the media have been kicked out, web services have been shut down and the simplest and most effective way for protesters to get their message out is through Twitter.
After the Iranian election pitted former Prime Minister Mahmoud Ahmadinejad against the reformist and reported crowd favorite Mir favorite Hossein Mousavi, bringing out several new voters that otherwise wouldn’t have participated in the election. When the election results came back with a surprising 65% victory for Ahmadinejad, the demonstrations and the protesting began.
The message quickly began to spread to the web, leveraging social networks like Facebook, media-sharing sites like YouTube and microblogging platforms like Twitter, blasting the political situation in Iran all over the world. But it’s the simplicity and widespread access of Twitter that has made it among the most effective of all the social media tools out there.
Effective enough to possibly have had the U.S. government request that Twitter postpone its scheduled downtime for maintenance purposes. Originally scheduled for last night, the scheduled downtime was pushed back until 2 pm PST today. For the past day or so many Twitter users have been posting tweets making the same request, but an article on Mashable suggests that the government may have had a large hand in Twitter rescheduling its maintenance.
If that is the case, what does it mean?
While the U.S. government has steered clear getting too involved with the controversy, its potential ability to recognize the power of Twitter’s microblogging platform as a means of catalyzing revolution is a major acknowledgment on all counts. Perhaps this has something to do with the fact that President Obama and his current administration is rather supportive of new media and social networking as means of widespread communication and the empowerment of the people.
Additionally, Twitter’s cooperation in pushing back the scheduled down time, one way or another, is indicative of Twitter’s awareness of the situation in Iran. A lot of emotion is involved with the election-related protests, and Twitter has proven itself a global powerhouse in regards to its ability to spread information and put a lot of power in the hands of the people.
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