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"Through it all, no one seemed to wonder why people trying to coordinate protests in Iran would be writing in any language other than Farsi." A very simple obs

"Through it all, no one seemed to wonder why people trying to coordinate protests in Iran would be writing in any language other than Farsi." A very simple observation, but so true, and so common-sense that you would almost overlook it.

barnaby 16y ago
Often it's the most obvious things that we most frequently fail to see.... Especially if we're actually looking for something different, like a raison d'être for social media in politics.
tibbon 16y ago
There were a lot of problems and issues in analyzing what happened last summer in Iran. With the Web Ecology Project we grabbed every tweet that we could find pertaining to the election, before and for over a month afterward. We got them all and released a paper on what we found (http://www.webecologyproject.org/2009/06/iran-election-on-twitter/ http://www.webecologyproject.org/2009/06/iran-election-on-tw...). We did pay attention to language issues. None of us were experts in any arabic languages, but we did make efforts to search for specific keywords in Farsi. Another huge problem, was that so many people on Twitter changed their location in attempts to 'protect' people on the ground there. I was unconvinced from day 1 of the efficacy of this attempt, but it certainly did make data analysis on a geographic basis rather hard. I'm sad that in the end there really was little to no effect on things in Iran. The election was rigged and there was nothing anyone could do about it. Complete revolution wasn't an option and the international community couldn't do anything either without just overthrowing the country and additionally destabilizing the area.
- ErrantX 16y ago
  It's unsurprising; beyond Twitter/the Web most people outside of Iran were apathetic about it. Those who did take definite action were definitely too few to really take on an actual government. The outcome was never really unexpected, but I think there were positives in the whole thing to be taken away. Like the idea that it;s hard for a government to cover up their actions from the rest of the world any more. Or that not even attempts to block Twitter were wholly successful. That's unfortunately no practical use to the protesters in Iran - but it's a positive start! And I can't help wondering if the first real tech generation, as they grow, will provide a "real life" power base to actually bring online action into real world results.
ThomPete 16y ago
Well those writing on twitter weren't to my knowledge trying to coordinate protests. They where trying to get the word out no?

barnaby 16y ago

Often it's the most obvious things that we most frequently fail to see.... Especially if we're actually looking for something different, like a raison d'être for social media in politics.

tibbon 16y ago

There were a lot of problems and issues in analyzing what happened last summer in Iran. With the Web Ecology Project we grabbed every tweet that we could find pertaining to the election, before and for over a month afterward. We got them all and released a paper on what we found (http://www.webecologyproject.org/2009/06/iran-election-on-twitter/ http://www.webecologyproject.org/2009/06/iran-election-on-tw...). We did pay attention to language issues. None of us were experts in any arabic languages, but we did make efforts to search for specific keywords in Farsi. Another huge problem, was that so many people on Twitter changed their location in attempts to 'protect' people on the ground there. I was unconvinced from day 1 of the efficacy of this attempt, but it certainly did make data analysis on a geographic basis rather hard. I'm sad that in the end there really was little to no effect on things in Iran. The election was rigged and there was nothing anyone could do about it. Complete revolution wasn't an option and the international community couldn't do anything either without just overthrowing the country and additionally destabilizing the area.

ErrantX 16y ago
It's unsurprising; beyond Twitter/the Web most people outside of Iran were apathetic about it. Those who did take definite action were definitely too few to really take on an actual government. The outcome was never really unexpected, but I think there were positives in the whole thing to be taken away. Like the idea that it;s hard for a government to cover up their actions from the rest of the world any more. Or that not even attempts to block Twitter were wholly successful. That's unfortunately no practical use to the protesters in Iran - but it's a positive start! And I can't help wondering if the first real tech generation, as they grow, will provide a "real life" power base to actually bring online action into real world results.

ThomPete 16y ago

Well those writing on twitter weren't to my knowledge trying to coordinate protests. They where trying to get the word out no?