Iranian blog activism

In June 2009, after the presidential elections in Iran, thousands of citizens, supporters of the opposition leader Hossein Mousavi, organized a protest against the regime that would later be known as the Green Wave, symbolized by its green color. In accordance with the orders issued by the current president Ahmadinejad, civic protests ended in a bloody police intervention, arrests and executions, while the country suffered a media blockade. The only window to the dramatic events was provided by the new media which, in this case, were an example of a guerrilla media warfare. The protesting citizens (mostly consisting of students and young population) used these media to regularly inform the global public and the rest of the Iranian population about the brutal events in the streets. They did this by uploading video recordings made by mobile phones or digital cameras to YouTube, by sending text messages from their mobile phones to friends abroad, by writing informative or descriptive posts on their blogs and Facebook profiles, or by posting short and precise tweets on the furiously dynamic social network, Twitter. Audio-visual information about the ongoing protests in Tehran was available almost in real-time, while the state television, radio and the press completely ignored the reasons behind the civic protests. The citizens acted as reporters, social and political analysts, and participants – all at the same time – and the Green Wave soon became not only a phenomenon of guerrilla reporting via new media, but also a phenomenon that lead to an appearance of a new dimension in the position of journalists and reporting – a dimension that is unprecedented in the recent history, and which has established a new and efficient framework of media activities in crisis regions.

It is estimated that the Farsi language, which is the language of the majority of Iranian blogs, is the second most-widely used language in the entire blogosphere. "Iran is a nation of bloggers – thousands of young people describe their feeling on their blogs", says the director of the documentary-animated film The Green Wave, Ali Samadi Ahadi, now a citizen of Germany. The film (screened to the Belgrade audience during this year's International Documentary Film Festival, BELDOCS) was inspired by blogs dedicated to protests and impressive video recordings from the streets of Tehran available on YouTube, which have been incorporated into the film. A moving scene – seen around the world during the protests – shows the death of a young student, Neda Agha-Soltan, in a shocking two-minute recording of a shot fired at her by a police officer and her subsequent bleeding to death on the street. The Green Wave is an attempt to depict the pain and creativity of Iranian citizens who could not remain silent but instead chose to act together as an ad hoc media force. It is a rare example of a documentary film art that skillfully utilizes the raw material in the form of SMS information, video recordings, audio clips, mini-video diaries and blogs, with the aim to present a story about media repression.

However, a prologue to the bloggers' activities during the Green Wave predates the protests and proves that Iranians are truly a nation of bloggers: in 2003, the bloggers in Iran protested on the web site dedicated to the UN digital summit in Geneva against the state censorship that had blocked the access to certain web sites to Google users. Still, the Iranian activist bloggers have paid a toll – a blogger, Omid Reza Misayafi, who had been sentenced to 20 years of imprisonment, died in prison. The Iranian government certainly understands the impact of blog activism, which remains a threat to the regime.

Links:
www.thegreenwave-film.com
www.readwriteweb.com/archives/iranian_blogger_reported_dead_in_prison.php
mashable.com/2009/06/20/iran-youtube

Vesna Peric

About the authors

MC Newsletter, July 15, 2011