The “Twitter Revolution” Wasn’t a Revolution for Iran–It Was a Revolution for the World

I just wanted to post a quick response to this article in Foreign Policy. The author, Golnaz Esfandiari, like so many others, seems intent on discrediting the impact of Twitter on the revolution in Iran. Was Twitter the cause of the attempted revolution? No. Was it the most important communications medium? No. But the article misses the point. The attempted revolution in Iran in 2009 wasn’t a revolution in Iran, it was a revolution in the media and how those of us outside these conflict zones perceive the world around us.

Here’s Esfandiari’s take on what she calls the “Twitter Devolution”:

But it is time to get Twitter’s role in the events in Iran right. Simply put: There was no Twitter Revolution inside Iran. As Mehdi Yahyanejad, the manager of “Balatarin,” one of the Internet’s most popular Farsi-language websites, told the Washington Post last June, Twitter’s impact inside Iran is nil. “Here [in the United States], there is lots of buzz,” he said. “But once you look, you see most of it are Americans tweeting among themselves.”

She’s just missing the point. Of course there wasn’t a Twitter revolution inside Iran. It was a revolution outside Iran. It alerted millions and millions of people in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere that there are serious problems in Iran that need to be fixed. It made the world wake up and realize that the people in Iran aren’t particularly happy with their corrupt and, dare I say, evil government. It showed that the world has become far more interconnected over the past decade than anyone realized.

The article mentions @oxfordgirl, and it does her an incredible disservice. Take a look:

Oxfordgirl was ultimately more successful at gaining publicity for herself than at helping any protesters in Iran. Compare her 10,000 Twitter followers with the 300 followers of a Karaj-based Green activist (who prefers not to be identified or to have his Twitter page publicized). The activist tweets in Persian, which few Western journalists can read, and he is often a source of valuable information about the mood in the country.

Yet again, she’s simply missing the point. Anyone who knows social media, communications, or even marketing knows that comparing number of followers is naive and immature, and insinuating that @oxfordgirl was doing it all for the “publicity” instead of helping the protesters in Iran is offensive to her and to her friends. I know her, respect her, and I understand her background. And if this journalist had done her research, maybe she would too, instead of sounding catty and accusatory.

Esfandiari recovers a bit with the following paragraph:

The story of Oxfordgirl gives a clue about the real role that Twitter played. There is no doubt that she helped spread news about the Iranian protests — often very quickly. Twitter played an important role in getting word about the events in Iran out to the wider world. Together with YouTube, it helped focus the world’s attention on the Iranian people’s fight for democracy and human rights. New media over the last year created and sustained unprecedented international moral solidarity with the Iranian struggle — a struggle that was being bravely waged many years before Twitter was ever conceived.

But that doesn’t make up for the downright misleading nature of the article. In the end, to me this sounds like a frustrated and desperate print journalist, all too self-aware of her impending irrelevance. It sounds jealous, naive, and uninformed. And the accusations pointed at @oxfordgirl are downright mean.

[Foreign Policy]