Iran's Twitter Revolution? Maybe Not Yet

Some Iranian election protesters used Twitter to get people on the streets, but most of the organizing happened the old-fashioned way

Iranian supporters of defeated reformist presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi demonstrate on June 17, 2009 in Tehran, Iran.

By Joel Schectman

Media across the globe have been focusing on a "Twitter Revolution" in Iran as hundreds of thousands of street protestors purportedly mobilized their demonstrations using the microblogging service. So great has the notion of Twitter's role in the Iranian protests become that the U.S. State Dept. reportedly asked the company to defer some maintenance. Twitter says it rescheduled maintenance work from June 15 to later the next day, or about 1:30 a.m. in Iran. "It made sense for Twitter…to keep services active during this highly visible global event," the San Francisco company said on its blog.

However, Iran experts and social networking activists say that while Iranian election protesters have certainly used social media tools, no particular technology has been instrumental to organizers' ability to get people on the street. Indeed, most of the organizing has occurred through far more mundane means: SMS text messages and word of mouth. Sysomos, a Toronto-based Web analytics company that researches social media, says there are only about 8,600 Twitter users whose profiles indicate they are from Iran.

"I think the idea of a Twitter revolution is very suspect," says Gaurav Mishra, co-founder of 20:20 WebTech, a company that analyzes the effects of social media. "The amount of people who use these tools in Iran is very small and could not support protests that size."

And with the government blocking the Twitter site, that small group becomes even smaller. Tech-savvy netizens can use proxy addresses such as Tor or Proxy.org to bypass the government block of certain IP addresses. But for many users, circumnavigating the government's blockage is too big a hurdle, and organizing in more conventional ways, such as over the phone or by knocking on doors, can be both quicker and easier.

Raising Awareness Elsewhere

Mishra, who has organized social media activism campaigns for elections in India, says the main reason to use the tools is the attention it generates in the international media. Indeed, one of Twitter's primary contributions in the Iranian elections has been to raise awareness of the issue among tech-savvy users outside the country.

"Political organizers use these tools because they create a multiplier effect—not only do you get a story about the campaign but then you also get a story about the fact they are using social-networking tools," Mishra says. "So you get two stories for the price of one. The international media loves [the] social-networking world. But in India or in Iran, their use is still somewhat limited."

Another reason for the hype surrounding Twitter's role in these protests is the lack of good access for reporters in Iran and the difficulty of covering the story of the protested elections. Iran's religious leadership declared incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the winner on June 12 with 63% of the vote a mere two hours after polls had closed. The opposition, which had largely supported Mir Hussein Mousavi, took to the streets of Tehran to protest; bloody crackdowns by police and militia followed. At least six people have died and many more have been injured, according to reports.

For now, these tools represent the best chance the demonstrations have of getting continued coverage. "Social media is not at all a prime mover of what is happening on the ground," says Ethan Zuckerman, a senior researcher at Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet & Society. "The reason social media is so interesting [for the press] is that the international media doesn't have its members on the ground."

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