It’s been an amazing week. As you may know, I was at a conference earlier this week and I’ll post more on that Sunday or Monday. Today, I’m compelled to talk about the aftermath of the Iranian Election and Social Media.
Let’s start with the definition of Social Media. Social Media is the creation of news and information by technology users. The applications I’ll be talking about here are YouTube, Twitter, and Blogs.
Likewise, let’s look at the facts, as we currently know them, about the Iranian Election. The BBC has a run down of who the key players are. The BBC also presents a Q&A of what happened with the election. As I was posting this, this is the first time I have read about the election from traditional media. This may seem odd, but I get most of my information from a mix of social and traditional media. In this instance, social media has been presenting me enough information that I have not felt the need until now to look at traditional media for answers.
So if we put social media together with the Iranian Election we get unfiltered news and views from the populous regarding what happened. How does this all work? It’s about sharing information, and links to that information, to inform more people to get the word out on what is happening. The New York Times today discussed how useful social media is to getting information out to the people. YouTube is filled with raw footage of what’s going on inside Iran. Twitter is going crazy with the “IranElection” hashtag (a hashtag is a way of labelling the twitter post to make it searchable and show a trend). In fact, the Iranian government even created Twitter feeds to counter the information put out by the populous. Even Facebook and Google are getting in on the action, by rolling out Persian-language versions and translators. Other technology is helping to get the word out – texting, picture sharing sites, blogs, and old-fashioned (in the technology sense) phone calls.
What is most interesting to me is the personal views about what’s going on in Iran right now. these personal views bring home what is happening and how it impacts people I know. My sister’s friend blogged about what she’s feeling; a news blog I read, Slog, posted photos and information texted out of Tehran. Another blog, from the New York Times, has been updating regularly about what’s going on in Iran. My sister’s friend has also been using Twitter to spread information. A link she shared on Twitter today has a list of 10 videos of the aftermath of the election in Iran. The 7th video brought tears to my eyes because of the beautiful poetry spoken (and subtitled) over the night scene in Tehran.
It’s important to note that social media is not necessarily creating the protests, but is used to advertise, inform, and show the protests. In some instances, there is no context for the information; in other cases, there is sufficient context to follow what is going on with out the need to view other sources. It’s also important to note that the information sent via social media doesn’t have an editor or fact-checker. In this sense, it’s not nearly as reliable as traditional media. However, since the Iranian government has blocked traditional media from sending reports, it’s the best we have for now. That said, social media is not necessarily telling lies; it would be pretty hard to fake some of the videos. The traditional media has picked up on the pictures of the unrest. And the alternative media is also trying to get a grip on what’s happening.
Is this the future of news? In some ways I say yes. When the traditional media is effectively banned from reporting, it up to the people, where ever they are, to report what’s going on around them. However, I don’t see this replacing traditional media altogether as we need vetted, reliable information as well as the unfiltered information. I see traditional media using more and more social media, and I believe this is the way traditional media will survive.
Leave a Reply