Iran’s Protest Goes Viral

Iranian officials have cut off key communication conduits within the country and barred access to foreign news broadcasts as election protests rage on. But protesters have found ways to get information by other means: They have turned to social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook.

The Los Angeles Times:

Iran has slipped into a guerrilla-style Internet and Twitter game of strategies and slogans pecked out by protesters attempting to outflank a government that has shut down communication outlets, leaving the nation breathless on snippets of text and stealthily uploaded pictures.

It is a battle on the streets and across the airways affecting the rest of the Middle East as well, a realm where technology is both churning out and smothering polarizing messages and images. Iranian authorities have blocked opposition websites, jammed satellite TV channels and cut off text messaging. Still, word is trickling beyond the censors, linking, however sparsely, opponents of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s rule from the capital of Tehran to those in villages in the north.

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Flickr/Hamed Saber

Protesters at a Tehran university.