Yeah, Jasp is definitely playing the ignorance card.
In the last decade or so, campaigners organizing protests and demonstrations have become more media savvy, exploiting new technologies. Evaluate how effective protestors have been in communicating their message via mass media, and discuss how far this challenges academic literature about the reporting of demonstrations and protests.
Introduction
In the past decade, with almost a third of the world’s population now online – a rise of six hundred percent since 2000 (Miniwatts Marketing Group, 2011), protest organisers and dissident groups around the world have become progressively more 'media savvy’ and have become increasingly effective in communicating their messages within the mass media. The Internet, coupled to other new forms of communication, has revolution how protest movements are organised and mediated due to it being as Manuel Castells defines it - a “particularly malleable technology, susceptible to being deeply modified by its social practice, and leading to a whole range of potential social outcomes.” (Castells, 2000, p. 50).
This essay will analyse the role that the internet played in the protests in Iran that followed the presidential election in June 2009 to explore how the organisers exploited this new technology and how this was used to communicate their message to the mass media worldwide. Firstly I will look at the greater context of the online public sphere in Iran and the organisation of opposition to the government led by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, secondly the organisation of the protests that began on June 15th and the use of 'Social Networking’, 'Blogging’ & the mobile phones in achieving this and lastly how the protesters use of citizen journalism and the Iranian diasporic community to communicate their message through the mass media. Following this I will look at whether this protest movement challenges the academic literature on the reporting of demonstrations and protests, primarily how protests are traditionally framed within the news media and also the theories of the Public Screen & Public Sphere.
From 'Blogistan’ to the Green Movement
To understand the role of new technology had on the protest movement in Iran it is important to briefly study the role the internet played in the public sphere in Iran and the foundations of the opposition before the election which planted the seeds for dissent. One of the key issues that faced Iran before the rise of the internet was the lack of freedom within the mainstream media. The main media institution in Iran is the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), which Cottle identifies as being in “complete control” (Cottle, 2011, p. 257) of the conservatives, the ruling party. Annabelle Sreberny has argued that IRIB is “hated by many” as it has led a “constant campaign against intellectuals, student & women activists and the reformist press” (Sreberny, 2010, p. 31), an argument that Cottle continues with the notion that this has resulted in people “failing to trust” (2011, p. 247) IRIB. This lack of trust of the mainstream media has little place to go as Cottle identifies that due to Iran being the only Persian speaking nation in the world “access to alternative media…is very limited” (2011, p. 247), couple to the heavy censorship of non IRIB media (2011, p. 247). Blogging has become the response to this; Sreberny estimates that in 2010 Iran had over seventy thousand active blogs (2010, p. 11) which within Iran itself are viewed as a place for “political expression, journalism…and social exploration in a milieu where such exploration is not particularly welcomed” (2010, p. 7). Cottle continues this argument by suggesting that in Iran “cyberspace provides its users with more reliable and significant means of participation in the formation of public opinion” (2011, p. 261) as opposed to the state controlled or censored mass media/
It is from this context that the Internet came to play such a fundamentally important role in the opposition movement that led to the organisation of protests in Iran following the elections. The clearest example of how Blogging in Iran was key in organising the opposition to Ahmadinejad is the 'Green Movement’. Following a public appearance of Mir-Hossein Mousavi in which he wore a green shawl, symbolic of being a descendant of the Prophet Mohammed (Cottle, 2011, p. 263), “supporters coloured their blogs, Twitter feeds and Facebook profile pictures green” (2011, p. 263). This movement of solidarity with Mousavi started on the internet but “quickly spread to the physical sphere” (2011, p. 263). This act of solidarity is a clear demonstration of how protest organisers are exploiting new technologies as it would not have been able to happen without the internet and bloggers.
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