Battle for hearts — and screens — of the world
#iranelection
Apparently, the song was right: The revolution will not be televised. It will be thumbed.
With traditional reporting silenced and with Iranian e-mail and Web services shut down by the government Tuesday, much of the information about the election protests in Tehran was coming through social media sites such as Twitter.com and Facebook.com.
Many users of social media sites access them through cell phones and messaging services, which use different pathways from the World Wide Web circuits that Iranian censors have labored to shut down.
“They’ve cut off telephone, e-mail, texting, and for foreign press issued a letter saying nobody can report without permission,” the Center for Arab and Iranian Studies in London said in a statement. “Twitter is the one thing being used.”
