Weird Convergence
Below is a cropped screengrab off of MSNBC’s front page as of 11:49am CT. Under the “Tech and Science” section they covered this stuff:
It’s a bit fuzzy, but you get the gist: the Iranian elections and how the Web is influencing them, several links to information/reviews on the new Ghostbusters videogame, and some video of “gay penguins” adopting a chick.
As Iran sits on the verge of total social upheaval, Twitter has become one frontline in public information warfare. Iranians are tweeting from the street disseminating all kinds of information before it ever hits the mainstream news, Andrew Sullivan keeps filling my TweetDeck with a new update about ever minute and a half (literally six since I’ve started typing this), and Twitter users from around the world are trying to manipulate Twitter’s features to subvert Iranian censorship in regards to the #iranianelections, as it has come to be called in Twitter-space. Sullivan’s blog is providing a significant amount of coverage, most notably some catalogued tweets from Iranians in the middle of the mayhem.
The subject is massive on Twitter — you can even trace people’s political philosophies as they meta-tweet the ways others are using Twitter on the subject. The blogosphere is, as always, running all the information it can find and asking questions. Yet, checking the front pages of the three major network news organizations (FOX, CNN, and MSNBC) the story doesn’t have as much traction. The Iran story is placed alongside other stories, and sometimes in ways that rehtorically link it to odd filler (like the MSNBC example above). It’s not that I will suddenly start thinking that gay penguins are fomenting a coup in Iran (although, that would be one hell of a story). But the rhetorical implications of visual strategies that set the Iran-story alongside a review of Ghostbusters undercuts the story’s validity. And, it’s one reason people on the web are turning away from mainstream sources for information. Why do I care what Anderson Cooper or Bill O’Reilly say when I can see Iranians and their experiences via more immediate social networking means?
To be honest, and account for my own personal failure, I wasn’t paying much attention to Iran’s upheaval until I started looking at the Twitter streams on it last night. Then, it became riveting. I wasn’t listening to Rachel Maddow and some American “expert” pontificate on the implications. I could learn through a more immediate experience in from which people were participating in the event, albeit from a distance.
It’s easy to dismiss Twitter’s place within the phenomena, and I hold some level of cynicism about it. But, one thing that Americans should never forget is the importance of information and how it is used rhetorically. Without their keen awareness of this, revolutionaries in America would never have mustered support either domestic or foreign for a war by farmers against the mightiest military force on earth. But, a sharp sense by people like Thomas Paine (Common Sense) of using rhetoric and public spaces to address the issue allowed it to grow.
I, in my cubicle at a small community college in America, have no idea the real nature of Iranians demonstrating in the streets and dodging bullets. But, I can at least sympathize and help that information spread in the name of free speech and personal rights.
Though most use Twitter for mundane updates designed to pander to an audience (I’m looking at you UKCoachCalipari! — and myself), this is what something like Twitter and the blogosphere are capable of. And frankly, in this day and age, they are far better equipped to deal with the issue than most mainstream news outlets. These resources can quickly mobilize a community-born/driven response to major social phenomena. The community rallies around an idea and focuses other community-members’ attention, disseminating information at lightning speeds. The rhetoric remains intact because the space itself is a simple one to use, unlike the visually complex pages at places like CNN, FOX, and MSNBC. Social networking and Web 2.0 spaces don’t feel the constraints of needing to cover everything at once.
Of course, Dr. Liza Potts has been telling me this for six months, now. But it’s riveting to actually witness it in action.
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