Iran: Before You Have That Twitter-Gasm….(Danger Room)

Interesting observation at the bottom of this Danger Room post.

Iran: Before You Have That Twitter-Gasm….

• By Nicholas Thompson  
• June 17, 2009  |  
• 6:49 pm

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/06/iran-before-you-have-that-twitter-gasm/

Before we all have a collective Twitter-gasm about the short-messaging service's use in Iran, let's breathe for a second. Yes, it's useful; yes, it's greatfor following the events here in the U.S.; yes, it might one day be a driving tool for revolution. But it's an overstatement to call it "the medium of the movement," as Time did.

We have no idea how many Tweets are spreading through RSS, Facebook pages, and text-messages. Nor do we know how info gets into every Twitter feed. But there's evidence that the reach of some of the most prominent Iranian "Green Revolution" Tweeters may not be as great as it first appears. For example, many of the Iranian tweeters described in the Western press seem to have between 10,000 and 30,000 followers. That's a lot; but Ashton Kutcher it ain't. And many of those followers are in the U.S. Check out @Change_for_Iran, @persiankiwi, @StopAhmadi, @persiankiwi, or @mousavi1388 and you'll see a lot of American names. At least in the first few pages, it seems to be about a third who are clearly in the U.S.

English-language tweeters of course have English-language followers. But Twitter isn't set up to make Farsi use easy (for example, you can't search for Farsi posts in the language section of Twitter'sadvanced search feature). In fact, the always helpful Nancy Scola has done a search on Twitter of all users who have listed their location as within 250 miles of Tehran. One interesting result: there are posts there only in Spanish, German, and English.

This afternoon, I emailed UCSD professor Babak Rahimi, the author of "Internet & Politics in Post-revolutionary Iran" and someone who is in Tehran right now covering the events. I asked what he thought of my hunch that we in the Western press are over-hyping the impact of Twitter.  Here's what he said:

"I very much agree with you. The Twitter factor is present, but not as significant as, say, cell phone or social networking sites… [granted, it's hard to separate these out -- nms] I just wonder (or worry) how the U.S. media is projecting its own image of Iran into what is going here on the ground."