Tues Ten 061609: Iran

Sorry folks, the Ten Tuesday Tickles in the way of GREAT design and style blogs I’ve been obsessed with this month will have to wait.  Holy Revolutionbrew, Twatman! I’m just too astounded by the situation in Iran and the amazing power of Twitter. My social media guru followees have been trying to get us to buy in, and until now I’ve just seen Twitter as a gigantic cocktail party in which I’m an eavesdropping wallflower. But, the events of the last two days have convinced me that this formidable outlet for citizen media has real power beyond “I just downed another cup of coffee” and “Here, read my latest blog post”.

10 amazing things/events/whatever about revolutions/free speech/life learned from Iran and Twitter:

1. Twitter postponed a scheduled maintenance shutdown because of the vital role the service was playing in accessing information in and out of Iran. They embrace their own potential. (Can’t see FB doing that, honestly)

2. The Iranian government disallowed any foreign journalists from reporting events outside their offices and from providing video footage. Censorship is alive and well, and used as a real weapon for oppression.

3. People on the ground in Tehran were actually working to confirm or deny reports that were coming out. I saw multiple tweets from freedom supporters disavowing incorrect reports of army activities, etc.

4. There are actually some hard-to-believe realities and guidelines about using something like Twitter to support global activities. See this link.

5. Get to know the cyber ins and outs because oppressors and dictators do. I “reTweeted” (twat?) the above link from it’s original site and 10 minutes later the web page had been pulled and an “account suspended” notice posted. Later it was posted again on the site listed. Can’t promise it will remain there.

6. Unlike the comfort of my upstairs office, some of the people tweeting from Iran are in REAL, not imagined danger. They might not be here tomorrow. Yes, we still live in that world.

7. ABC’s morph into Presidential TV on July 24 for a sell-job on healthcare reform is looking a little Ahmadinejad-ish.

8. Are there actual people out there who really don’t understand that David Letterman was talking about Bristol Palin and not her 14-year-old sister? Inappropriate bad joke in poor taste aside, do we really need to manufacture an “outrage” when there’s one staring us right in the face?

9. People everywhere just wanna be free. (Thank you, Rascals) You can’t get a good freedom movement down. It’s why totalitarian regimes don’t work in the end.

10. Words have power, and it’s my right and privilege to use them. Own it. Take responsibility for it. Make it count.