Policy & Internet, Vol. 4, No.

3-4, 2012

A Revolution in 140 Characters? Reflecting on the Role

of Social Networking Technologies in the 2009 Iranian
Post-Election Protests
Philipp S. Mueller and Sophie van Huellen
The 2009 post-election protests in Tehran in Iran are colloquially referred to as the Twitter
revolution. Mainstream public opinion assumed that the use of social media, such as Facebook,
Flickr, YouTube, and especially Twitter, significantly affected the evolution and outcome of the
revolutionary collective action. This paper analyzes the Iranian case to look at the effect of such
many-to-many media on power structures in society. Two analytical approachesthe power-shift
and the media-shift perspectiveare offered as possible heuristics to frame the complex interplay of
media and revolutionary politics. Analyzing empirical findings on Irans Web demography,
censorship mechanisms, the protests organization and the Western mass medias reaction, we find
that social media played a decisive role in raising international awareness by transforming the
agenda-setting process of the Western mass media. However, they turned out to be of lesser
relevance for the protests progress in overthrowing the regime. A change in the mediascape does not
automatically imply a changed powerscape, at least not in 2009 Tehran.
KEY WORDS: social media, revolution, Iran, twitter, protest, collective action

Introduction
Two hours after the polls closed on June 12, 2009, the Iranian Islamic Republic
News Agency announced the re-election of the incumbent President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad with a majority of 63 percent. Shortly thereafter, the supporters of
Irans opposition, especially those of Ahmadinejads rival candidate Mir-Hossein
Mousavi, initiated a protest movement to dispute the election results. The
protesters actions were soon referred to as Irans Twitter revolution by Western
commentators. This was motivated by the observation that demonstrators made
use of new social media Web technologies, including Facebook, Flickr, YouTube
and especially Twitterin a twofold manner: not only did online social media
serve as a tool to organize and coordinate protests, they also played a decisive role
in raising awareness about the demonstrations in the international public sphere.
Foreign media outlets relied on the information, pictures, and videos posted by
Iranian protesters on Twitter and Facebook, especially after the Iranian regime

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deterred news correspondents and journalists in Iran from producing their own
content.The interaction of Web technologies, mass media, and politics confronts us
with a not well-understood form of revolutionary collective action, with commentators split between describing social media as an emancipatory agent, or a
dangerous disillusionment (Morozov, 2011).
We cannot imagine the twenty-first century mediascape without such manyto-many media (Shirky, 2009), but it is not clear how (or if) they can change
existing power structures. Therefore, it is necessary to ask two questions: first,
do many-to-many media have the potential to play a significant role in
challenging existing power relations? If this contention proves well founded one
can proceed to ask: how do many-to-many media change power structures in
society? These questions are relevant not only to better understand what actually
happened in Iran in 2009, but to understand collective action in a world in which,
according to Castells (2009), traditional mass media have lost the monopoly of
making sense of our worlds. The latest political upheavals across many Arab
nations in 201112, conventionally subsumed under the Arab Spring label show
clearly that we need to better understand the interplay of many-to-many media
and revolutionary politics.
Historical and Theoretical Context
The Iranian protesters were not the first to utilize social media to organize
and amplify their voices. Social media already had played important roles during
the 2005 French banlieues riots, the 2006 youth riots in Budapest, the Zimbabwean opposition uprising in 2008 (Nyaira, 2009), and the 2004 Ukrainian Orange
Revolution when flashmobs, organized via SMS, and discussion boards contributed to its success (Goldstein, 2007; Shirky, 2009). Further, Twitter was used
massively by protesters during the Greek riots in late 2008, and the spread of
sympathy worldwide among the Internet community triggered solidarity protests
in many European cities. This impact at the international level has caused
scholars to talk about the rise of a new global phenomenon: networked protest
(Morozov, 2008); a notion that describes an opposition movement for which the
Internet is valued as being crucial for its occurrence and persistence. Social
networking technologies are involved in many of todays social movements
(Kirkpatrick, 2010), and seem to transform traditional modes of protest politics,
with many-to-many media enabling a new form of collective action (Castells,
2010). However, what is missing from existing studies is a persuasive framework
to describe the interplay between traditional media, social media, and power
relations in society. This is what we hope to accomplish in this article. We use the
2009 Iranian election protests as a case study to develop a general framework that
allows us to understand this interplay of media and politics. We offer two
guiding hypotheses for the analysis of such cases: the power-shift hypothesis and
the media-shift hypothesis.
The power-shift hypothesis assumes that many-to-many social media will
empower the actors who use them. The notion of power itself is, in reference to

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Max Webers definition, understood here as the ability of a social actor to enforce
their will, even against the will of other actors. To better understand the
interaction of many-to-many media and traditional power relations, we differentiate between two relevant power patterns: coercive power (Weber, 1978) and
structural power (cf. Foucaults or Castellss notion of power through
discourse; Castells, 2010; Foucault, 1972). Coercive power is caused by a
superiority based on material advantages of one actor over another: power can be
exercised either by physical violence or the threat thereof. Structural power is the
fixing of power relations through institutions by which some social actors
dominate others (Castells, 2010). Rather than using force, structural power is
legitimized by meaning, constructed in the public sphere by those under
domination (Habermas, 1989). The construction of meaning arises through
communication, with the power to influence the meaning and value-defining
process (agenda power). The ability to control social media (and the construction of meaning) should therefore lead to changes in agenda-setting and
institutional power arrangements (Castells, 2010; Kirkpatrick, 2010; Lessig, 2008;
Post, 2009).
The media-shift hypothesis assumes that the Internet, and more specifically
the mainstreaming of many-to-many media, such as blogging, collaborative
editing, and social networking, has changed how we produce and consume
information at all levels (Benkler, 2006; Grewal, 2008; Shirky, 2009). However, we
do not claim here that many-to-many media is superseding mass media (Benkler,
2006), but rather that it is entering a complex interplay with mass media, where it
is substantially impacting the media cycle (Lehman-Wilzig & Cohen-Avigdor,
2004), but not automatically altering social power relations.
Traditional mass media is exclusively broadcast media, that is, one-to-many
media, where direct feedback is impossible (Lasswell, 1948).1 In many-to-many
media, the emitter and the recipient coincide, theoretically allowing for the
empowerment of new social actors. However, the reality is more complicated, as
media production in a networked realm can take on a variety of forms: it can
include information broadcasting, that is, sent from one-to-many (e.g., blogging,
micro-blogging), it can be a conversation between many (a forum or social
networking), or it can be a project, that is, collaboratively produced by many,
and broadcast thereafter (e.g., Wikipedia, Indymedia, Ushahidi). The difference
between conversations and projects is that socially produced conversations
do not generally intend to generate a common project, while collaborative
production often focuses on the output of the collaboration. While both
conversations and projects are naturally exclusive to many-to-many media,
as actors within the network produce media for other actors within the network
(Breakenridge, 2008; Kelly, 1998; Monge & Contractor, 2003), broadcasting can
take place on many-to-many or one-to-many platforms (television, radio, print).
Considering these three communication patterns that are observable in social
media production, it is obvious that they are closely embedded in the traditional
channels of mass media. Thus the media-shift hypothesis reminds us that the use
of a different type of media does not automatically entail a power shift: while

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social media technologies indeed introduce a new mediascape, they do not

necessarily introduce a new powerscape.
The Case: A Revolution in 140 Characters
The Internet in Iran
In 2009, at the time of the Iranian post-election upheavals, 23 million of the
66 million Iranians had access to the Web (CIA, 2009). With 35 percent of its
population online, Iran has far more Internet users than its neighbors
(Corley, 2009). Interestingly, they have the thirteenth largest Internet community
in total users while they only hold 133rd place in the worldwide ranking
regarding the number of available Internet hosts (CIA, 2009). With such a huge
demand served by only a small number of suppliers, the Internet hosting service
is highly centralized in the hands of a few, which is convenient for any kind of
censorship and surveillance to take place.
About three million Iranian blogs exist (Schams, 2009), of which 60,000 are,
according to Kelly and Etling (2008), frequently updated. This large discussion
space is not solely used by the stereotypically young, democratic critics of the
current regime. Among the four major network groups clustered in Irans
blogosphere map (Figure 1), both the Secular/Reformist and the Conservative/

Figure 1. The Iranian Blogosphere.

Note: Node size reflects the number of inbound links from other blogs; nodes are colored according to
what they link to over a long period of time. An interactive version is available online.
Source: Berkman Center (2009).

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Religious group can be classified as Internet activists, however, on very

different political sides (Hill & Hughes, 1998, p. 14). Together those Internet
activists occupy more than half of Irans blogosphere, cover a wide range of
political opinions and topics. Bloggers in these categories are more likely to be
male and young (students and young adults between 18 and 35), and many of
them blog anonymously (Hill & Hughes, 1998). With over 40 million Iranians
under the age of 35, more than half of whom are men, this potential cyber-society
represents a huge portion of Irans total population. As many newspapers cease
publication, young Iranians are using the Internet as an alternative space for a
civil society, reflecting the wide range of the extremely varied interests, political
and apolitical opinions, and hopes of the younger generation (Schams, 2009).
However, it is obvious that although a great number of Iranians have access to
the Internet and to the above-mentioned social network a striking number of
citizens are still excluded, due either to a lack of technologies or a lack of
knowledge (Alavi, 2009).
According to the Open Net Initiative (ONI)s 2006/2007 report, Iranian
Internet users face one of the worlds most comprehensive and sophisticated
filtering systems (ONI, 2009). The legal and institutional basis for this system of
filtering and censorship was put in place through various decrees issued by the
Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution in December 2001 (ONI, 2009). Today
the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance (MCIG), the Ministry of Intelligence
and National Security, and Tehrans Prosecutor General (Saeed Mortazavi at the
time of the 2009 uprising) are in charge of filtering methods and deciding which
websites should be banned (ICTRC, 2005).
The legal structures for enforcing speech restrictions in Iran such as the Press
Law of 1986 (Pars Times, 1986) form the foundation for regulation of the Iranian
media, and now the Internet. The law was expanded in April 2009 in order to
apply also to domestic news sites and websites and is implemented through four
different techniques: the employment of a centralized filter blocking certain
domains, content filtering methods, surveillance, and bandwidth restriction.
According to the latest ONI research on Iranian censorship (ONI, 2009), Iran
has further developed its filtering technology toward a centralized and government-controlled filtering regime. Data traffic traveling into or out of Iran is
filtered by centralized gateways, the Internet Service Provider (ISP) proxy servers
(ONI, 2009). In 2008, Iran blocked access to more than five million Internet sites,
and in recent years, commercial ISPswhich are forced to apply filtering
methods by the MCIGhave been instructed to block access to political, human
rights and womens rights sites, various news sites, as well as social networking
sites such as Facebook and YouTube (ONI, 2009). The structural (institutional)
power executed by the Press Law of 1986, in combination with coercive power,
enforced through the various filtering methods implemented, puts a high
pressure on Irans Internet users.
In July 2009, a month after the presidential elections, the Iranian parliament
ratified a further law to monitor cyberspace. Officially it aimed to reduce
cybercrime and to secure Internet users privacy, however, the law required ISPs

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to store their customers data traffic for up to three months, so that in the case of
suspicious actions the client could be detained in the name of national security.
At the time of the protests, Tehrans Prosecutor General not only disposed more
stringent censorship techniques and laws but also ordered harsh actions against
journalists and Internet activists. Reporters Sans Frontieres noted cases of torture,
arrests, and murder (Reporters Without Borders [RSF], 2009b). Additionally,
the Iranian Revolutionary Guard2 actively enforced the Internet content
standards, creating an atmosphere of fear among Internet activists and promoting
self-censorship (RSF, 2009b). Iran also instituted an explicit cap on Internet access
speeds for households, at 128 kilobytes per second (Sullivan, 2009).
This combination of a priori preventive filters and bandwidth restriction and
a posteriori strict law enforcement grounds the effectiveness of one of the worlds
most comprehensive and sophisticated Internet censorship schemes (Faris &
Villeneuve, 2008). Even if circumvention is possible, the governments surveillance and blocking efforts have imposed serious impediments for Internet users
within Iran as well as for academic research, as the reliability and origin of
primary sources is often open to doubt.
Iranian Politics
The founding of the Islamic Republic of Iran at the end of the Islamic
Revolution in 1979 marked a turning point for Iranians. Before the revolution,
Iran was a constitutional monarchy with a partly open society under the regime
of the late Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. With his Westernization and
modernization policy, the Shah alienated himself from the poor in rural Iranthe
majority of his citizensand increasingly also from Irans intelligentsia, who
were widely unsatisfied with their limited possibility to influence political
decisions, and with the economic threat of inflation. Meanwhile, the radical clergy
under the leadership of the exiled Ayatollah Khomeini provided a theory of an
alternative state and spoke in a language understandable to the great masses of
the urban areas (Kamali, 1998). Khomeinism provided an ideology different to
nationalism and socialism, and the radical clergy re-orientated themselves in a
modern society and adapted to modern but decisively non-Western concepts,
which provided them support and legitimacy also among Irans intelligentsia.
As Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi wrote in 2006, the unfolding
revolution hypnotized the modern and well-educated citizens. However, the
main support came from the dispossessed, a class that had been widely ignored
by the Shahs regime. Under his charismatic leadership, Khomeini united major
parts of the regimes opposition and with the military support of his Revolutionary Guard (an ideologically driven branch of Irans military), he eventually
overthrew the Shah. Since then, Iran has been an Islamic state under the Sharia
law. Liberal students and professionals soon realized the scope of their error in
their understanding of the revolution Khomeini had designed (Ebadi, 2006).
When the reformer Mohammad Khatami was elected president in 1997, the
Tehran Spring (Ebadi, 2006) promised to bring about a relaxation of the

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suppression of freedom of speech. This belief turned out to be misplaced, and

student protests at Tehran University in 1999 and 2003 were brutally suppressed
by the police and the Basij.3 With the inauguration of conservative hardliner and
former mayor of Tehran Mahmud Ahmadinejad in 2005, hopes for a relaxation of
the Islamic system were dashed. In the subsequent presidential election in 2009,
the reformist politician and former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi was the
promising opposition candidate, enjoying a high popularity among liberals and
the younger generation, especially students. After his quickly declared defeat by
the incumbent president Ahmadinejad, he claimed the election was rigged and
thousands of his followers started protesting in the streets of Tehran.
A Twitter Revolution?
The protests in Iran began on Saturday, June 13, 2009. The day before,
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had been declared the winner of the 2009 Iranian
presidential elections, only a few hours after the close of the polling stations. The
supporters of Irans opposition, especially those of Ahmadinejads rival candidates Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karrubi, suspected electoral fraud by the
Iranian regime and therefore initiated demonstrations in order to challenge the
official results of the election.
At first, the Western mass media failed to report on the protests (Cohen,
2009). However, via online social media, including Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and
YouTube, Internet users in Iran provided information about the protests,
including photos and videos, so that the global networked public sphere could
observe the events (Cohen, 2009; Economist, 2009; Stocker, Neumann, & Dorting,
2009). Consequently, Internet users in Western countries questioned the delay in
mass-media coverage of the demonstrations: CNN, for example, was accused of
reacting to the events too late (Cohen, 2009; Economist, 2009).
Both before and after the election, the Iranian government tried to close down
all communication channels in order to keep protesters from organizing on the
streets, as well as to isolate the opposition from the outside world. Personal
blogging domains on Blogspot.com and other hosting services were made
unavailable (ONI, 2009).4 Additionally, official websites created for the election
campaign, including www.yaarinews.irwhich was designed for the former
president Mohammad Khatami, a leading reformist figure who dropped out of
the election race in favor of Mousavi and Karrubiand websites of the reformist
coalition such as www.baharestaniran.com, were shut down (ONI, 2009). Access
to social networking sites was denied throughout the election period as well as
afterward, as the opposition was believed to be using them to mobilize their
supporters. Similarly, international, independent Persian and Western media
websites, mainly those with English content, were banned, among them
Al-Arabia, Balatarin, Global Voices, the Huffington Post, and the New York Times
(ONI, 2009). Moreover, during and soon after the election, the mobile phone
service was cut off frequently (The Atlantic, 2009). Communication via cell
phones or short messages was impossible or at least difficult, so that people had

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to switch to word of mouth to inform each other about rallies. Despite this strong
coercive power executed by the regime, some protesters somehow managed to
circumvent the restrictions, which caused floods of cell phone video clips and
news about the brutal crackdown in Tehrans streets being broadcast over the
Web, triggering an international solidarity movement. Social networking tools
seemed to play a major role in organizing the protests despite the restrictions,
and were used to circulate advice about breaking the governments censorship.
The question about the interplay between Web technologies and the Twitter
revolution can be observed through two lenses: the power-shift and the mediashift hypotheses. The power-shift hypothesis assumes that technologies empower
the masses and therefore lead to revolution. The media-shift hypothesis assumes
that technologies impact how political acts are perceived in the traditional
Western mass media and change the nature of mass communication, but not
automatically the existing powerscape. Let us examine them one by one.
The Power-Shift Hypothesis
The power-shift hypothesis holds that the use of Web technologies empowers
the masses and therefore reshapes the political reality. This implies, in the Iranian
case, that Web technologies significantly influenced the outcome of the revolution. In other words, the power to create meaning and thereby to challenge the
regimes legitimacy was transferred to the crowd though use of new Web 2.0
technologies (Shirky, 2009). By this logic, the new agenda-setting power of the
masses challenges institutional power and eventually overcomes a regimes
highly coercive power structure, leading to regime change.
However, revolutionary theory tells us that factors other than the emancipation or empowering of the masses might be relevant for a revolutions success.
Recalling Goldstone (2001), the trigger in a revolutionary process is a public
perception that a regime is unjust. In the Iranian case, this condition was met by
the general perception that the election had been rigged. Goldstone (2001) further
explains that the interplay of a vanguard group, interpersonal networks, and a
cross-class coalition are pivotal elements for the development of a revolution; in
other words, the elite nucleus has to succeed in connecting with other popular
groups. For this linkage to occur, group structure must exist beforehand. In the
case of the 1979 Iranian revolution the dispossessed were successfully included
(Ebadi, 2006), and with his inclusive religious claim, revolutionary leader
Ayatollah Khomeini succeeded in gaining support across class structure.
In the more recent events, Facebook and other social network sites helped
their users to accumulate weak ties (Granovetter, 1983). Thus in the case of
organizing events, a large number of people could potentially be reached in a
short amount of time.5 However, whether a movement succeeds in mobilizing
cross-class groups is highly dependent on the a priori structure of the communication network used. Additionally, one has to take into consideration that Web tools
such as Twitter and Facebook hold the danger of exaggerating a movements
momentum (Schectman, 2009). As the possession of a smart phone or Internet

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access is a prior condition for forming part of a social cyber-network, a

considerable number of Irans citizens are excluded ex ante. This to some extent
follows Castells (2000) argument, that network societies imply exclusion
mechanisms due to technological dependency (Stalder, 2006).
Another consideration for the mobilizing potential of cyber-networks, is that
the network has to be sustainable during the mobilization event in order to serve
as a reliable organization and communication tool. While this role of the Internet
has been assumed to be critical for the organization of protest in Iran by Western
societies,6 restricted Internet availability and censorship made some doubtful about
the relevance of social Web technologies during the 2009 post-election uprising.
Circumvention and Internet Activism
In 2006, Shirin Ebadi described the situation in Iran as being equivalent to the
post-revolution days in 1979, despite the fact that information technology and
the Internet have made blackout censorship impossible (Ebadi, 2006, p. 194); a
statement that expressed a hope in, and the importance of, new communication
technologies in Iran. Indeed, despite a strict censorship regime, Iran has a lively
Internet community that is eager and able to circumvent the governments
blocking efforts (Berkman Center, 2009). During the June 2009 election and
especially during the post-election period, the Internet served as a tool for first
the political campaign of the opposition; second, the mobilization, coordination
and legitimation of antigovernment protests; and third, the spreading of
information outside Iran, triggering a worldwide solidarity movement. However,
the scope of influence of new communication technologies within Iran is difficult
to measure. In the following, we examine the oppositions activities on Facebook
and Twitter during the post-election uprising in order to form a picture of Irans
Internet community.
Data traffic in Iran seeking a blocked destination has to take a route over
proxy servers (Boyle, 2009). If the Internet Protocol (IP) numbers are not on the
Iranian filtering systems blocked list, any data traffic from Iran can pass through
these transit points. From there, the traffic can be forwarded to any destination.
During the post-election crisis, countless proxy servers popped up around the
world, with websites such AnonymousIran.com, Proxy.org, and Sesawe.net, all
offering random proxy in order to circumvent the states filtering system and
access blocked uniform resource locators (URLs). Notably, most of the ad hoc
proxy providers were generated by amateur activists, including exiled Iranians,
family friends, relatives, and peers worldwide without any previous ties to the
country and its political situation. Those set up proxy servers on their private
computers, many following instructions shared on Twitter using the hashtag
#iranelection proxy (Popkin, 2009). Without the international support from
activists outside Iran, circumvention would probably not have been possible to
the extent that it occurred.
Using the micro-blogging service Twitter makes it even easier to circumvent
censorship, as it is naturally independent from any fixed URL: whoever requests

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the service of other Twitter users does not have to access a single website.
Although the Iranian government could block access to the Twitter domain or
individual Twitter feeds, tweets can be sent and received on a broad variety of
platforms, including cell phones, and websites such as Twitter Fox (Sullivan,
2009), Facebook, blogs, and Twitterfall (Zittrain, 2009). With the ability to use
Twitter via ones cell phone through text messaging, microblogging does not even
require Internet access. This made it an optimal tool for censorship circumvention
in the case of the Iranian upheaval in 2009.
Thousands of Twitter users worldwide followed the post-election events in
Iran via tweets supposedly sent by political activists within Iran. The hashtag
#IranElection was the most requested and most active on Twitter for weeks
following the election (Twitterfall.com, 2009; TwitterStreamGraphs, 2009). However, many claim that the role of Twitter in the organization of protests was
highly overestimated. According to Mishra (2009) there were approximately
10,000 Twitter users in Iran before the election of whom fewer than 100 showed a
high activity during the post-election unrest. According to Sysmos.com (2009)
there were more than 20,000 Twitter users in Iran after the post-election uprising,
with the Iranian Twitter community experiencing a growth of almost 10 percent
in June 2009. An astonishing 93 percent of the Twitter users were reportedly
located in Tehran (Figures 2 and 3).
After the election, the proportion of tweets including the hashtag #IranElection being tweeted from within Iran, compared with those being tweeted from
outside, changed dramatically. The percentage of those originating in Iran
declined from over 51 to less than 23 percent, while those from outside grew
from 27 to 40 percent (Figures 4 and 5).7 Additionally, the content changed over the
course of the first week post-election. The word Mousavi was most frequently

Figure 2. Profile Creation Dates (Iranian Twitter Users).

Source: Sysmos.com (2009).

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Top Iranian Cies

Shiraz 0.94%

Tehran 93.03%

Mashhad 0.83%
Ray 0.78%
Tabriz 0.58%
Isfahan 0.39%
Yemen 0.37%
Karaj 0.33%
Qom 0.28%

Figure 3. Declared Locations of Iranian Twitter Accounts, June 2009.

Source: Sysmos.com (2009).

Percent Tweets About Iran Elecon

no locaon 21.62%

not from Iran

from Iran 51.35%

Figure 4. Location of Tweets Using the Hashtag #IranElection (June 11, 2009).
Source: Sysmos.com (2009).

used before, with strong associations with the words freedom and vote. A
week later the content had shifted to Iran with associations with Mousavi,
protest, and Tehran (Figures 6 and 7).
These changes in Twitter content and network structure could indicate
several processes triggered by the elections results announced on June 13, 2009.
Firstly, Twitter activists were probably aware of the fact that the international
Twitter community was listening to them, so they added general key words such

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Percent Tweets About Iran Elecon

not from Iran 40.39%

no locaon 35.79%
from Iran 23.82%

Figure 5. Location of Tweets Using the Hashtag#IranElection (June 19, 2009).

Source: Sysmos.com (2009).

as Iran in their tweets to label them for people who are not deeply involved in
Irans politics (Figures 6 and 7). Second, the protesters in Tehran probably used
Twitter to organize events, at least initially. Simultaneously, users reported
protests as they happened. Through the multiplier effect of forwarding (i.e.,
retweeting) tweets, the number of people tweeting about the events in Iran
increased drasticallyat least according to Twitter fall and other Twitter hosting
sides. Third, there were numerous activists requesting that people outside Iran
change their Twitter location to Tehran to mislead the government and hinder
their efforts to trace dissidents. This development made it increasingly difficult to
distinguish between those tweeting inside and those tweeting outside Iran
(Figures 2 and 3). This raised doubt about the role played by Twitter in
organizing protest on the streets of Tehran.
Moreover, although there were ways to bypass the governments censorship,
this was not an easy task and hence only a few probably did so (Schectman,
2009). Thus it is likely that mobilization within Iran mainly happened through
more conventional communication channels, including text messaging and word
of mouth instead (Mishra, 2009; Schectman, 2009). This is because mobilization
through the strong and weak ties of everyday life appears to be much easier, less
risky, and thus more effective for organizing such huge protests as were observed
in Tehrans streets (Schectman, 2009).
However, Twitter influenced the Western worlds perception of the protests
more than any other social media tool. The findings discussed above indicate that
those tweeting within Iran were well aware of this fact and that they geared their
messages toward a curious audience outside Irans borders (Figures 4 and 5). By
successfully circumventing government censorshipat least by somethe opposition movement presumably gained the impression of power over the regime;
and regardless of the extent to which this circumvention might have actually

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Figure 6. Associations Between Major Twitter Discussions (June 11, 2009; One Day Before
the Election).
Note: Shortly before the election, conversations gravitated around the presidential candidate Mousavi
with the strongest links to Iran, freedom, and vote. Links to Persian content were also strong,
indicating that debates were taking place mainly among Iranians.
Source: Sysmos.com (2009).

helped to organize protests, the solidarity movement triggered in the Western

world was an obvious evidence of their success. With this sense of empowerment,
they were probably more likely to feel strong enough to protest against the
government beyond the virtual space. Additionally, the solidarity from outside
Iran was an important source of legitimacy for the protesters. Hence, with
increased international awareness, protesters as well as Western commentators
might have tended to overestimate the scope of antiregime sentiments within
Iranian society and thus perceived the protests as representative of Irans citizens.
However, recalling Goldstone (2001), revolutionary mobilization and networking have to move beyond class structures, and thus must include the
majority of Irans citizens. While Twitter and other networking tools reached
successfully beyond Irans borders, it is doubtful if they also succeeded in
reaching a wider mass within.8 Furthermore, it is debatable to what extent the
content was actually produced within Iran. The shift in the content and the

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Figure 7. Associations Between Major Twitter Discussions (June 19, 2009; Post-Election).
Note: A few days after the election, major conversations coming from Iranian Twitter users involved
the keywords Iran, which had the strongest links to Mousavi, Tehran, and Protest. This shift
refers back to the protests taking place mainly in Tehran. It is notable that Persian content had been
fully displaced by English content, probably reflecting the awareness of Iranian activists of their
international audience.
Source: Sysmos.com (2009).

striking extent of English tweets might hint at a great number of tweets being
sent from outside Iran. Indeed, the extraordinary rise of Twitter users located in
Tehran was to some extent caused by the eagerness of external sympathizers to
mislead the Iranian government (Figures 2 and 3). Considering the strict
censorship, and the effort and knowledge required for circumvention, Twitter
might have been big in Iran, but even bigger abroad, at least during the period of
the uprising.
Beside Twitter, Gheytanchi and Rahimi (2009) suggest that for Mousavi
Facebook also played a role, especially as a campaigning tool in the pre-election
period. Mousavi and other leading reformists, as well as the former president
Khatami, maintained Facebook pages where they built support against the
hardliner regime, posted their speeches and invited their followers to discuss
political issues. Via Facebook, the opposition party successfully organized
campaign events during the pre-election period. A search of Facebook in mid

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July 2009 for Mir Hossein Mousavi or Iran Election resulted in 67 proMousavi groups and seven pro-Mousavi pages alone, with the most popular page
claiming over 110,000 supporters. Information given on the page was at the
time written in both Persian and English, with hundreds of people commenting
page in
on Mousavis statements. The Mir Hossein Mousavi
particular contained lively and informative content, the high level of Persian text
suggesting that it was used mainly by Iranians. Most of the pages supporters
had Iranian names and wrote in Persian on their own profile pages. The
bookmarks of (inter alia) mousavi1388, MirTweets, and Mousavi facebook
revealed further activity on Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, and GhalamNews.irMousavis official news webpage.
Mousavi certainly used these channels to communicate with his supporters,
however, his messages were not designed to organize protests but rather to
encourage his followers to continue with their resistance. Tweets like Tonight &
tomorrow night we must be louder and clearer than ever before, chanting Allahu
Akbar (God is great) from rooftops. #iranElection or I am prepared for
martyrdom, go on strike if I am arrested #IranElection were some encouraging
ones. Only a few actually concerned protest organization, such as: Please join
Mousavi, Khatami and Karoubi tomorrow at 4 pm from Enghelab Sq. to Azadi
Sq. in Tehran for a crucial green protest #IranElection. Similar to the Twitter
findings, the dominance of English content is striking on all the social network
channels on which Mousavi was active. This could imply that Mousavi and his
supporters were aware of the interest of the global community in Irans possible
political change. Again, the support of a wide community outside Iran might
have been a source of legitimation and motivation.
Compiling the above findings, it is clear that Mousavi and the opposition
movement managed to communicate through various social network channels.
Even if the mass of information on protest organization was probably distributed
through more conventional channels like word of mouth and mobile phone
devices, communication between the opposition leader and his followers likely
traveled predominately through the Internet. Messages and speeches posted by
Mousavi and his confidants might have fueled and sustained the movement.
Additionally, protesters triggered an international solidarity movement through
messages, tweets, and images spread via Twitter, YouTube, Flicker, etc. This
might have led to an overestimation of the oppositions power within Iran among
protesters as well as in the Western community, however, with support from
outside, the opposition gained a legitimacy it might otherwise have lacked.
However, this global mass mobilization probably failed to include the
majority of Irans citizens, given that the scope of the network predetermined the
potential of its agenda-setting power. Hence protesters gained institutional power
within the existing network, however, they did not reach beyond. In addition to
the heterogeneity of the network, the regimes strong coercive and institutional
power further diminished the oppositions scope. The cyber-network failed to
ride a revolution as it was not able to transcend class structure within Irana
necessary condition for a revolutions success (Goldstone, 2001).

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The Media-Shift Hypothesis

Communication in the twentieth-century mass-media culture is described as
being extremely centralized (Castells, 2000), with most of the power in the
communication process being concentrated in the hands of professional journalists working for media companies, with other members of society only having a
limited opportunity to share their ideas, as least with a large audience (Benkler,
2006): this can be described as a one-to-many mediascape. In the process of mass
communication, the flow of information mainly follows the same direction: from
the sender, such as newspapers, radio, and television, to their audiences, the
members of society. This assumption also applies to probably the most prominent
model of generation of public attention for an issue: agenda-setting. Mass-media
audiences recognize the prioritization of issues in media outlets, and hence adopt
the media agenda of issues as their own agenda of socially relevant problems
(Rossler, 1999). Given the audiences chance to influence the agenda of the media
is small (letters to the editor, calling in to the radio station), the agenda-setting
function is centralized and monopolized in the hands of the mass media (Rossler,
1999). The only nonmedia actors likely to have a significant influence on the
media agenda are the social elite, especially politicians and public relations agents
(Rossler, 1999). Ordinary audience members, by contrast, are supposed to be
passive consumers of mass media and the agendas constructed through them;
agenda-setting seems to be a centralized process, in which power is in the hand
of professional journalists, who decide upon the relevance of an issue making use
of journalistic working routines, for example, news values (Galtung & Ruge, 1965;
Schulz, 1976). Therefore, capturing the radio station is important for revolutionary
collective action.
In the field of international news production, considered here, the concentration of power is even stronger than in domestic news. The production of
international news in most media outlets depends strongly on the input of a few
international news agencies, who compete in a very small, almost monopolized
market (Franzke, 2000; Hafez, 2002; Hintz, 2000). Additionally, international news
agencies are in many cases dependent on official information published by
governments who, consequently, can exercise a strong control on exactly what
information leaves (or does not leave) a country. Hafez (2007, p. 36) describes the
resulting chain of high power concentrations in the communication of foreign
news as a trickling down of news from official foreign government communiques to the mass-media audience at home.
Benkler (2006) describes the transformation of our mediascape from one-tomany to many-to-many media in The Wealth of Networks. Benklers idea is that the
use of network technologies enablesparticularly in the domain of information
and culturea new mode of peer production that can replace traditional
industrial (and concentrated) mass-media production processes (Benkler, 2006):
the dynamic of many-to-many communication. Consequently, a new networked
public sphere will be established, in which communication processes are
structured much more democratically than in the mass-media public sphere,

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because each person has a chance to make contributions and to state their ideas
and opinions, resulting in a greater diversity of publicly available information
(Benkler, 2006). Furthermore, despite the ease with which centralized mass media
can be controlled by authoritarian regimes, Benkler (2006) suggests that network
technologies can function as a tool to work around the control of information: it is
exceedingly difficult to fully shut down all communications on a network, in
particular if the communication process does not rely on static websites and
central servers.
Bilateral News Coverage
After attention had been attracted to the Iranian protesters in the global
public sphere through worldwide access to peer-produced content covering the
demonstrations, the amount of news coverage of the issue grew rapidly, both in
traditional mass media and on online social network platforms. However, the
Iranian government soon sharply restricted the work of foreign professional
journalists in Iran, so that they could no longer produce their own content, to the
extent that they were even expelled from the country (RSF, 2009a). Under the
conditions of traditional centralized production of mass-media information,
the Iranian governments control over professional journalists would have caused
a near total media blackout in Iran, however, the regime was not able to control
the distributed content on social media platforms (Stelter & Stone, 2009). This
explains why Western media continued to have sources of information, such as
photos and videos documenting the protests, which enabled them to continue
their coverage of the demonstrations (Schectman, 2009). Photos of the Iranian
Basij paramilitary forces breaking into houses, destroying property and shooting
into crowds of people, as well as protesters on the streets of Tehran, were
published in classical mass-media outlets such as the Guardian, the BBC, the
Economist, CNN, and others. The international media also featured photos
showing members of paramilitary groups beating protesters with sticks. In this
context, the death of Neda Agha-Soltan, a young women whose dying moments
were filmed and spread on the Internet, raised attention, becoming a symbol of
the rebellion not only in Iran but also in the international news coverage.
Given that the networked public sphere was the first space where information
about the protests in Iran became available worldwide, networked peer production played a significant role for globally calling attention to the demonstrations
however the revolutionary politics played out in one-to-many or mass media: The
debate in the West about these events started online, and traditional mass media
reacted to the ongoing online discussions and public awareness of the issue
(including the criticism of a lack of reporting). Social media, particularly Twitter,
had the potential to play an important role in the agenda-setting of the Iranian
protests, because they distribute information in real-time (Stocker et al., 2009).
Peer production processes on social media are much faster than the mass-media
news cycle, and the creation of public awareness for particular issues has
accelerated.

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Nevertheless, the Iran case provides evidence that mass-media journalists are
increasingly sensitive to conversations on the Web, given they followed the
demand of news coverage driven by the readers and producers of social media,
by adopting topics to the mass-media agenda. However, while members of
the public were able to set the news agenda by utilizing social media, YouTube
videos and tweets were often meant to broadcast information to a broader
audience without a direct feedback loop. Thus, social media production only had
a strong influence on traditional mass media as long as it was embedded in the
traditional news cycle. However, the media market islike any other market
driven by supply and demand. The stronger signaling power of the demand side
necessarily influences the supply side and thus influences the agenda-setting
process. Additionally, social media production also serves as a competitor,
supplying the market with an alternative source of news coverage. With this
doubly influential power, social news production essentially impacts the creation
of relevance, but does not take over sole control of setting the news agenda.
The mass media are just beginning to take into account the production of
relevance in the network public sphere when creating their own media agendas,
thus conceding a portion of their power and influence to the collective of
members of society online (Holler, Vollnhals, & Faas, 2008; Rossler, 1999). The
mass media still fulfilled its traditional function in the public debate on the
demonstrations in Iran, by informing those people who were not engaged in
social network newsgathering, and by carrying the information to large audiences
quickly. Furthermore, by reporting constantly on the Iranian issue and including
it in their news agenda, the mass media confirmed the relevance of the topic for
all members of society, not only for those in online networks. One could assume
that mass media thereby even strengthened attention on the topic in the online
public sphere. In addition, journalists were keen to reduce the vast amount of
unconfirmed information on the Internet in order to provide their audience with
the most accurate image of the situation as possible.
Considering the complex interplay between traditional news coverage and
social media news production, news agenda-setting power seems not to have
shifted to the realm of social media, but rather is increasingly driven by the
strong signaling power of peer-produced media. The Iran case reminds us that
social media has in no way superseded traditional mass media, but rather has
entered a complex mutual dependency in which the power of agenda-setting is
diversified.
Conclusion
Although the Iranian Twitter revolution was ultimately unsuccessful in
terms of overthrowing the regime, social networking technologies were relevant
in the motivation, perpetuation, and reinforcement of the political opposition
movement. By triggering an international solidarity movement, the resistance
gained a sense of legitimation, which probably strengthened protesters will and
augmented their agenda-setting capacity. Although the protests organization

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mainly traveled via word-of-mouthconsidering the high efforts necessary for

censorship circumvention, this was the much more convenient and effective
waythe opposition successfully utilized social networking technologies during
the election campaign and to motivate their supporters during the uprising that
followed. However, what led to the 1979 revolutions success was surely the
support of the populations majority, gained by a cross-class linkage that was
lacking in the 2009 social cyber-network. While social media did not lead to the
regimes fall, it increased the antigovernment movement, especially abroad.
We are clearly confronted here with a complex rearrangement of existing
power structures and in need of frameworks that allow us to think these through
intelligently. The interplay between a mediascape, where many-to-many media
increasingly matter and the powerscape, where reaching many will always
matter, is difficult to untangle: the power-shift and media-shift hypotheses allow
us to structure this debate.
Dr. Philipp S. Mueller is a business development director at CSC, the IT service
provider, and teaches digital strategy and leadership at the Business School
(SMBS) of the University of Salzburg. He received his doctorate from LudwigMaximilians-University, Munich and studied at Harvard and Georgetown. He
has published extensively on the transformative impact of digital networking
technologies on governance. His latest book Machiavelli.net: Strategy for Our Open
World was published in 2012 (in German).
Sophie van Huellen is a Ph.D. candidate in Economics at the School of Oriental
and African Studies, University of London. She previously studied Political
Economics and Political Science at University of Erfurt and has a Master of
Science degree in Development Economics from the School of Oriental and
African Studies, University of London.
Notes
1. Although Katz, Blumler, and Gurevitch (1974) argue that the recipients are not purely passive, but
that they gear media to their gratification, and hence actively make a choice among the media
available, the feedback through the mass medias demand site is indirect and only binary
(consume/not consume).
2. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard was founded after the Iranian Revolution 1979. It is a military
group enforcing the law of the Sharia and controlling the Basij. Under Mahmoud Ahmadinejad its
power has also augmented in political, economic, and social fields (Ebadi, 2006).
3. The Basij-e Mostazafin (Basij) is a paramilitary militia founded by Ayatollah Khomeini during the
1979 Iranian Revolution.
4. The quoted stats provided by the Iranian government to the International Telecommunication
Unionused by ONIhave been challenged recently, as being overly exaggerated (see http://
www.telna.ir/News/8119/Default.aspx).
5. Facebook, together with numerous dissident websites, was blocked during the pre-election period
(ONI, 2009), hinting both at its popularity, and the governments assumption of its usefulness to the
opposition.
6. For example, the U.S. State Department asked Twitters managers to delay a scheduled maintenance
so that Iranians could continue to use the site (Palfrey, Etling, & Faris, 2009).
7. The remaining 22 and 37 percent of Twitter users tweeting about the uprising did not state their
location (Sysmos.com, 2009).

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8. Considering that Irans population, especially the young generation, is not homogeneous (Alavi,
2009; Kreile, 2009) as well as Irans blogosphere (Berkman Center, 2009)two-thirds are pro regime
and closed, one-third are oppositional and highly connected with outside Iranthe network has
probably failed to include major parts of Irans society.

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