Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other online tools allowed the world to know what was happening inside Iran more quickly than mainstream media. Indeed, many Twitter users started using green avatars to express their support for the Iranians protesting the allegedly rigged election results.
Now a young Iranian woman, Neda Soltani, whose death was captured on cell phone video footage now spreading across the Internet, has become the face of the protest movement in Iran. Her death has been condemned by US President Barack Obama in what is his strongest statement to date against the violence in Iran.
If you’re on Twitter, you’ve probably noticed that a number of users now have a green avatar. That’s to show their support for democracy in Iran, where Twitter has become a vital tool for those protesting the allegedly rigged results of the elections.
In fact, for days, #IranElection has been the top Trending Topic on Twitter, which even postponed the site’s scheduled maintenance at the request of the US Government, working around the Iranian timezone.
With mainstream media over the weekend failing to satisfy the hunger for news on the protests against the Iran election results and subsequent government crackdown, it was New Media which once more came to the rescue.
Twitter has become a vital tool not only for people around the world to know what’s happening inside Iran–the hashtag #IranElection is the number one Trending Topic on Twitter as of this writing–but has been harnessed by the Iranian protesters themselves. Now Twitter users are lobbying via the hashtag #NoMaintenance to convince the microblogging site to postpone its scheduled maintenance.
