A Revolution in 140 characters or less

While I fully admit to being somewhat of a news junkie, I didn't create this blog to editorialize world events and politics. That said, I cannot skip past what had me absolutely riveted yesterday afternoon through the wee hours of the morning, and again today.

As most of you are aware by now (I hope), Iran held its presidential election on Friday. In the days before the election, Moussavi (or Mousavi, or Moosavi, depending on what source you are reading/regional dialect), a reformist candidate opposing Ahmadenijad had a surge of support, especially after a debate between the two. On Friday, Mousavi's supporters turned up in droves at the polls. An overwhelming 80-85% of the eligible population voted that day, lining up long before the polls opened, and polls were kept open 4 hours later than planned to allow for the unexpectedly massive turnout. Many analysts predicted Mousavi's victory. At the very least, all agreed it would be a very close race. Ahmadenijad still had staunch support in rural areas, but the reformist youth's activism had recruited many members of their family who had not voted in decades, or ever, to come out and cast a ballot for change. The median age in Iran is 27.

The scenes on the news were heartwarming on voting day - rallies and cheers from seas of people in Tehran, clad in green, Mousavi's color, throwing up peace signs, smiles on every face. Then, the results started to come in - Ahmadenijad was claiming well over 60% of the vote, with Mousavi less than 30%. How could that be?

In fact, much of the "results" did not make sense.

Iran casts paper ballots, which are time consuming to tally. In the previous 9 elections, tallies did not start to trickle out of the Interior Ministry for hours after the polls closed, in small numbers, from each region and city. Friday night, shortly after the polls closed, results were announced in tens of millions of votes, giving Ahmadenijad a landslide victory lead.

As each new tally came in, from every region, the ratio was the same, uniform across the country, in rural and urban areas alike. In fact, even in Mousavi's and Karoubi's (another reform candidate) hometowns, strongholds of their belief systems, they lost by the same margins.

When plotted, the vote counts as they came in, make a nearly perfectly linear graph. Nearly statistician and analyst I have seen quoted on this calls those results "statistically impossible."

Here's the chart:


However, it is worth noting that statistician Nate Silver argues here that this is not so unusual, though many readers pointed out flaws in his analysis.

Another blogger summarizes here:

On the basis of what we know so far, here is the sequence of events starting on the afternoon of election day, Friday, June 12.

• Near closing time of the polls, mobile text messaging was turned off nationwide
• Security forces poured out into the streets in large numbers
• The Ministry of Interior (election headquarters) was surrounded by concrete barriers and armed men
• National television began broadcasting pre-recorded messages calling for everyone to unite behind the winner
• The Mousavi campaign was informed officially that they had won the election, which perhaps served to temporarily lull them into complacency
• But then the Ministry of Interior announced a landslide victory for Ahmadinejad
• Unlike previous elections, there was no breakdown of the vote by province, which would have provided a way of judging its credibility
• The voting patterns announced by the government were identical in all parts of the country, an impossibility (also see the comments of Juan Cole at the title link)
• Less than 24 hours later, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamene`i publicly announced his congratulations to the winner, apparently confirming that the process was complete and irrevocable, contrary to constitutional requirements
• Shortly thereafter, all mobile phones, Facebook, and other social networks were blocked, as well as major foreign news sources.

Our own government here, as well as Canada's, did not accept the results, citing the irregularities as cause for concern. This was reported by all the major media networks, and if you have been following the news, you are likely already aware of all I have said so far.

Which brings me to the subject of this post - what most people were NOT aware of yesterday, unless they were on Twitter. Yep. I know how that sounds, but read on.

Yesterday afternoon I logged into twitter to check on what my friends were up to, as I do once or twice a day. Glancing at the "Trending Topics" list, I noticed that #IranElection held the number three spot (at the time), and four or five others were related - Mousavi, Ahmadenijad, Tehran, Iranian. I have never before clicked on, much less followed, any of the "trending topics," but being the political news junkie I am, I was intrigued, and clicked on the feed for "#IranElection."

What I found was astounding. Tweets were coming in faster than 100 per minute. Most of them were tweets and re-tweets of posts from Iranian citizens in Tehran describing the massive protests and riots taking place in the city. I learned that facebook, twitter, SMS texting, BBC Persia, and cell phone service had been completely shut down, effectively cutting off communication to the outside world. The few Iranians still able to update were using illegal satellite uplinks, and what they communicated was shocking.

User "mousavi1388" was posting regularly and uploading photos as fast as he could to his flickr page. Links to ahriman46's youtube feed had constantly updating videos he took with his cell phone. Here is one from Saturday.




After seeing this video of students being tear gassed, I sent ahriman46 a message thanking him for his bravery in taking these videos and getting them out to the world in defiance of the media crackdown. He wrote me back, saying:

" thank you very much for your supports, right now im trying to upload as the latest news so the whole world get the massage of iranian people.
and again thank you for your support, we will never forget it."

As I write this, he is still uploading videos of today's protests and riots.

The twitter feed was nothing short of riveting. The few users posting from inside Tehran painted a picture of massive chaos, police brutality, burning of ballot boxes. One or two journalists in Tehran also managed to leak updates to twitter.

Jim Sciutto, ABC news Sr. Foreign Correspondent posted these twitter messages to the #Iran and #IranElection feeds yesterday mid-afternoon (EST):

• #iran Coup? Reformers and rts groups say military has closed opp offices, taken control of sts and forced maousavi to accept defeat
• #iran violent protests in downtown iran. mousavi supporters clashing with riot police on motorcycles swinging batons, firing tear gas
• #iran ahmedinejad. police confiscated our camera and videotapes. We are shooting protests and police violence on our cell phones
• #iranelection Riot police wear body armor & ride two to a motorcycle, one in back swinging a baton. Images of Mad Max
• #iranelection, by the numbers. what's confusing is how mousevi, an azeri, lost his home city tabriz, an azeri stronghold
• #iranelection. More broadly, these results would make ahmadinejad the most popular iranian pres. ever. that stretches belief for some
• #iranelection Police chief says police acting to 'protect the people's votes' [posted 4 hours ago]

Last night many of us were following @Change_for_Iran, a student who was posting from a rooftop across from one of the buildings of Tehran University - events unfolding in real time early Sunday morning in Tehran:

• black riot guards with black vans, it's my first time seeing this people, no badges! probably Intel ministry #iranelection
• they are joining with police motorcycles in front of student's dormitory buildings firefighters are leaving the area right now #iranelection
• Internet barely works, Speed is near 2kbps #iranelection
• I guess the Intel ministry guy is trying to convince university's security to open the gates #iranelection
• my brother thinks they are after a student council activist. the council known as Tahkime Vahdat and belongs to president era. #iranelection
• from the looks of it they are waiting to arrest all the students! it's also explains the vans
• some people are now parking their cars in middle of the street trying to block the vans. #iranelection
• police demanding people to move their cars and start crashing car windows. more people are coming. I will try to get a better view

Minutes later:

• tear gas #iranelection
• my eyes are burning hard to keep them open #iranelection

No further updates for half an hour, causing many of us to worry, then finally:

• I'm dizzy but ok. some people are getting shelter in the nearby unfinished bank building. police arresting a middle aged man
• it's 9:54 AM -Amirabad street near Pasargad bank and to be honest I don't have the courage to leave the roof right now #iranelection

According to many, Mousavi and several other reformists had been placed under house arrest.

Tehranlive.org was updating with stunning photographs.


Their website has since been banned by the government.

So there we all were, thousands? Tens of thousands? on twitter, following the #IranElection topic, watching a possible revolution unfold in real time. Of course, while the videos and pictures could be verified, rumors were flying through the topic, and we all wanted independent verification. Anyone can make a twitter account and pretend to be posting from Iran. So we turn to the media to see what they are saying about the protests... and the answer from the American networks, at least last night, was... nothing.

BBC had this coverage (graphic violence warning):



Al-Jazeera was purportedly streaming live coverage on their english channel according to many tweets, but I was unable to install the plugin I needed to watch.

In the US, the only real front page news of the protests and riots was from the New York Times, excellent coverage from Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic (I highly recommend reading this, as he provides many more links and updates and insight than I can here) who was updating as often as he could. Nico Pitney of the Huffington Post was doing the same (both still are). Laura Secor of The New Yorker released an excellent online-only inside account of Iran's stolen election. NPR was also said to be covering the unrest, though I cannot verify that.

What about CNN? MSNBC? FOX? Headline News? Their websites had stories on the election, but had not been updated in hours, and little to no coverage on the protests, violence, arrests, burning buses and buildings taking place in Tehran we had all been following on Twitter for hours and hours. Prompting Andrew Sullivan to update his coverage with this post - The Revolution Will be Twittered.

The lack of coverage, most notably by CNN, prompted the Twitter followers to add the hashtag #CNNfail to their posts. Within an hour, #CNNfail was third on the list of trending topics. Don Lemon (@donlemoncnn) began responding but quickly became defensive as CNN continued to be bashed for their lack of coverage. Here's an article from cnet news on the Twitter #CNNfail story.

Not long after #CNNfail hit the 3rd spot, CNN changed their top story from the bankruptcy of Six Flags to the Tehran protests.

As I write this, it is now front page news on most network sites, as it should be. Mainstream Media has finally started covering what all of us on Twitter knew hours and hours before. #IranElection is still the number two topic as I write this, and the Iranian citizens I have been following are still giving us updates in real time. I think some of them have yet to sleep.

While I already recognized Twitter as being uniquely suited to follow world events in real time, I never thought I'd see the day where I had to rely on it for coverage of one of the most important political events taking place on the planet as it happened. Friends and family I spoke with last night were completely and totally unaware of what was happening in Tehran, as CNN, MSNBC, Fox, etc spent their air time going round and round about the Letterman/Palin feud, showing reruns of Campbell Brown, and the confusion surrounding the switch to digital television.

I realize that the mainstream media networks cannot simply run with whatever is being posted to twitter and publish it. There is a delay between real-time updates from social networking sites and articles or broadcasts for a reason - the networks need time to verify the information and sources, and write comprehensive articles to be published or broadcast on air. That said, several foreign networks like the BBC had coverage long before the American media, and CNN in particular took a beating due to the fact that they were far behind MSNBC and other network news websites in making the Tehran unrest their top story.

I will be checking my regular news sites for updates on the situation in Iran - but not as often as I'll be checking #IranElection for from-the-source updates as they happen. Twitter might function mostly as a platform for people to inform their friends what they had for breakfast, but last night it proved itself to be a more effective journalistic tool than I think the founders ever could have imagined. Mainstream media, you have some work to do.