Iran election news in 140 characters or less

By Rebecca Santana

updated 6:56 p.m. ET June 15, 2009

CAIRO - An opposition activist spreads word of an upcoming protest in the streets of Tehran. Another posts pictures of clashes between demonstrators and police.

As Iran's government cracks down on traditional media outlets in the aftermath of the country's disputed presidential election, tech-savvy Iranians have evaded censors and used the microblogging site Twitter to organize and spread information.

"When I'm not connected to Twitter it means that I'm disconnected from the world because the state TV doesn't report many things!" wrote one Twitter user who identifies himself as "hamednz" who communicated with The Associated Press through the e-mail. His profile says he lives in Rasht, a city to the north of Tehran near the Caspian Sea.

Like all the Twitter users in Iran who agreed to be interviewed for this story, hamednz did not want his identity revealed for fear of retribution from government authorities.

In Iran, as in many still-developing countries, Internet usage is mostly still a phenomenon of the affluent, young and city-dwellers — meaning Twitter and other networks are used mostly by the young and liberal — and may over-emphasize their numbers while ignoring more-conservative political sentiments among the non-connected.

Still, the use of Twitter and other tools in Iran in recent days to send pictures and messages about the situation to the outside world — in real time as events unfolded — was a powerful example of how such tools can overcome government attempts at censorship.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone acknowledged the limited group of users in Iran, who don't necessarily represent the mainstream. "Because Twitter is still a nascent service the sentiment is likely narrow," Stone said in an e-mail Monday to The Associated Press.

"However, we noticed people creating accounts during the riots presumably because they heard Twitter was the most efficient way to discover and share what was happening in the moment," Stone wrote.

Outsmarting the censors
Supporters of reformist challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi are more likely to use Twitter and Facebook. Poorer, less-educated voters have flocked to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Iranians must outsmart government blocking to use Twitter, on which users post messages limited to 140 characters called "tweets."

Twitter and other social-networking sites remained blocked Monday in Iran. Users must go to other sites that post their tweets for them and allow them to read tweets from others.

Facebook was used to organize people before the election, but it was also blocked after the vote. On Monday, the site was replaced with a message that said the page was blocked under filtering policy.

"Since the election, we have heard reports that users in Iran are having difficulties accessing Facebook," said Barry Schnitt, Facebook spokesman. "This is disappointing, especially at a time when Iranians are turning to the Internet as a source of information about the recent election."

Cell phone service, which had been down in the capital since Saturday, was restored Sunday, but Iranians still could not send text messages from their mobile phones. Text messages are another way to tweet.

Judging by tweets since Friday's election — the censorship didn't even slow some of them down. Many then share their tactics with tweets.

"The fact that the government is not able to stop all of the information is really key," said Robin Gross, executive director of IP Justice, a San Francisco-based digital rights group. "They can only sort of censor in a patchwork way, and censorship by its nature has to be all or nothing."

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