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Journalist, filmmaker evaluates social networking

Olivia Natan | Phoenix Staff

Kouross Esmaeli discusses Iran’s recent presidential election in “Tweeting in Tehran.”

In print | December 3, 2009

When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared victory over Mir Hossein Mousavi in June, violence poured through the streets of Iran. But as the government began suppressing lines of communication often used in social uprisings, Iranians turned to a new medium: Facebook and Twitter.

Kouross Esmaeli, an Iranian-American journalist and filmmaker, gave a multimedia presentation earlier this week entitled, “Tweeting in Tehran: How to Win or Lose a Revolution in the 21st Century.” The event was held on Tuesday afternoon in the Scheuer Room.

Esmaeli reminded the audience that the past 100 years of Iranian history have been marked by many revolutions and strikes. The 2009 presidential election was “not transparent at all. There were many irregularities … many mobile polling places were without poll watchers,” he said.

Most suspiciously, while it was expected to take three days to tally the votes, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner only three hours after the polls closed, Esmaeli added.

His opponent, Mir Hossein Mousavi, was far more liberal-minded, advocating social justice and a relaxation of the strict social laws currently in place in Iran. His supporters were horrified by his defeat, especially under such questionable circumstances, but their efforts to protest led to violence with the government’s paramilitary groups and attempts to silence the protesters.

“For three days after election, the Iranian government shut down as much communication as possible,” Esmaeli said. Text messaging was shut down with the help of private companies like Nokia. Most Internet connections — except landlines — were cut down. Members of the foreign media had their visas cancelled and were forced to leave the country.

While the citizens of Iran were able to successfully boycott Nokia, eventually regain texting, and use the slower landlines, they were not able to bring in global reporters. Instead, they filled the void themselves, uploading cell phone footage of the demonstrations and clashes with the military and sending out messages through Twitter and Facebook.

“The people used cell phone footage to tell the world, ‘Everything is not okay,’” Esmaeli said.

Esmaeli said that the Iranian regime blamed the riots on a small number of Westerners seeking to create chaos, remembering a CIA-led coup d’etat in 1953. Hundreds of thousands of Iranians contradicted this statement by participating in a silent protest in the streets on the fourth day after the election.

The situation only grew worse as Supreme Leader Ayatolla Khamenei, an extremely popular figure who Esmaeli called “an arbiter between left and right,” aligned himself with Ahmadinejad. This gave the paramilitary units free reign to attack the crowds, which led to the deaths of somewhere between 10 and 50 people, including Neda, a university student. She became an icon of the conflict when her demise was captured on video and uploaded to the Internet.

The media coverage of tweeting from Iran came to a halt on June 25, when Michael Jackson died, and “the world stopped paying attention to Iran in favor of the King of Pop,” Esmaeli said. Over time, the government restored texting and internet to the people, and the conflict “became a political struggle rather than a confrontational one,” he said.

Now the government is developing a web presence of its own, with blogs, Facebook pages, and Twitter accounts for officials like the Ayatollah. Furthermore, the various ministries communicate through the Internet, which is why it could not be entirely removed at the height of the problems.

Esmaeli said that this incident shows that the appearance of “democracy and an electoral system is not enough to ensure a fair and legitimate reality.” He said the lesson the world can take from the conflict is that it is up to the people to stand up to a government that takes too much power.

Ashley Banks ’13, who attended the lecture for her Peace and Conflict Studies class, said that she found the video clips particularly fascinating and informative, noting that many “citizens help[ed] to protect the crowd control officers.

“It really stuck with me that — for the most part — the crowds kept in mind that these individuals were human as well, and just doing their jobs.”

Clara Gordon ’11 said, “I remembered it from the news, but I didn’t really understand it then. It was really interesting to get an insider’s perspective.”