It is 20 years since ‘people power’ brought down the Berlin wall and ended decades of authoritarian government across Eastern Europe. In 1989, state control of the news media made it difficult to co-ordinate mass protests, which probably explains why the discredited Communist regimes were able to hang on for so long.
Leap forward 20 years and we are now witnessing the role of social media as a means of organising popular protests on the streets of Tehran. The state’s control of the mass media is no longer a major factor in controlling public opinion.
This excellent blog post from Gordon Macmillan provides a great summary of how social media is being used in Iran, especially the all powerful Twitter. It is also interesting to see how unlike in China during the recent anniversary of Tiananmen Square, the Iranian establishment appears unable or unwilling to close down social media sites, such as Twitter. As Judith Evans wrote in today’s Times, it as ‘an electronic game of cat and mouse’ between the computer-literate dissidents and the censors.