As expected, the recent elections have sparked anger over the blatant disregard of personal freedom for supporters of the opposition leader Moussavi who say they have been cheated. As expected, the closed state tries to silence protests and other forms of civil disobedience by blocking or interrupting mobile phone services and of all internet-based services Twitter which has been one of the best sources of information, responsible for the organization of protests in the capital Tehran that has managed to go through the information blockade. The portability and effectivity of Twitter to bring instantaneous news out to the rest of the world has put supposedly elected President Ahmadinejad mad as hell at attempts of what he calls are Western powers who have been giving the Iranian political system a shaking it should not have been subjected to.
Twitter being one of the fastest and only available links to the outside world, along with scant video from mobiles that have managed to go through the extensive information black-out has heeded requests by protesters from the opposition party to halt scheduled maintenance to allow a continuance of use of their services that apparently was used to organize the protest movement. Techcrunch and Gawker both have features on the developing story, most of which happens outside of the field of sight of the rest of the world in what is well known to be a suppressive society.
Even the religious leaders of Iran who have always resisted influence from the outside world has been forced to reconsider demands for a re-count of the votes, many of which have been rigged according to the opposition’s supporters.
The tides may be turning in a country that has just recently enjoyed a solid stance against the rest of the world, holding on to their ways of old. Change as President Obama has says, is a question of when rather than a question of how, the use of social media being one of the holes the government may have failed to plug, getting news (real news from the streets) out of the country where none should have ever gone through. This might be one of the most significant roles, social media has played since it was launched as WEB 2.0, and as we see, it is a flood that cannot be dammed by any walls nor blockades, linking humans to others like him with the same thoughts and feelings.