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Twitter is a Propaganda Platform

by Jared

June 25, 2009 at 9:02 am
Tagged: Iran, Twitter

As my friend Michael points out, the Iranian troubles are about whether one theocratically-approved politician should be chief administrator instead of another theocratically-approved politician. I haven’t done much research, but my instinct is that the election may well be valid and it doesn’t make that big of a difference anyway. Wake me up if it switches into a revolution against the Islamic Republic.

Since professional journalists have been unable to report from Iran, Twitter has been the medium of choice for citizen-journalists. The problem is that Twitter is not good at filtering out noise. So much of the news is apparently distorted, either for entertainment purposes or outright psychological warfare.

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1. Don

   on June 25, 2009 at 9:43 am

   I haven’t done much research, but my instinct is that the election may well be valid and it doesn’t make that big of a difference anyway.

   That was exactly my initial reaction, and I still think that the election may have been valid enough.

   However, my impression is that the protests have become about something more than just replacing one chief administrator with another one also friendly to the theocracy. About moving Iran into a post-revolutionary state, more stable and open but, yes, still a repressive theocracy.

   Reza Aslan, on the Daily Show last night, said that Iran is on a brink and could either become a North Korea (more reactionary, more militaristic, and much more closed and isolated from the world) or a China (with the oligarchy still in place, but less of a closed society and more open). As you seem to be, Jon Stewart was unhappy with those two options and wanted “to get a Belgium up in this bitch.”

2. Kyla

   on June 25, 2009 at 11:34 am

   Statistically, it is very very unlikely that the election is valid. Just as a comparison, a study with a 1% chance of being wrong is considered “extremely likely” to be correct and is what is used in the most rigorous medical studies.

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