websense

A few weeks ago the world watched as Iranians protested the announced results of thier latest election. As the protests grew the Iranian govenment began to block all foreign media. An unprecidented thing began to take place. Tech savvy citizens took to the web to let the world know whats happening. Amatuer videos began to show up on facebook, and Twitter was the main vehicle for pictures and fast news updates. The Iranian governmant tried to restrict access to the web, with little success. Iranians have found plenty of ways to get around the blocks the government tried to use to limit the information getting out of the country.

We’ve seen social media present a story or news item first, such as in the incident of the plane crash in Buffalo, NY, but this is the first time we’ve seen it used as the main source of information in an international story. The world would have been unaware, or at least much less aware of what was going on in Iran if it were not for Facebook and even more so, Twitter. The constant stream of information coming from Twitter made it possible for the rest of the world to know what was happening. We may not have known how many tens of thousands of protesters there were in Tehran, or the fact that the religious leaders declared Ahmadinijhad the winner, and said that anyone still protesting the outcome of the election should be put to death.

As we look ahead, I am sure we can expect to see more and more of this. Even in countries where you can be put to death for defying the government, information is going to get out. How hard do you think it would be to get some equipment into North Korea, and get some information out? Maybe some brave soul will give it a try…

This entry was posted on Friday, July 17th, 2009 at 8:26 am and is filed under Current Events, General, Politics, social media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.