Social media reporting successful in heavily-censored Iran

Posted by Emily Dilling on June 18, 2009 at 4:52 AM

Social Media sites such as Facebook and Twitter are proving to be successful outlets for reporting on events following the presidential election in Iran, where news is being heavily restricted and censored by the government, Poynter Online reported.

The microblogging site Twitter has confirmed itself as a particularly valuable resource during recent protests in Iran, so much so that the U.S. government appealed to the networking site, asking it to delay scheduled maintenance in order to keep the site active and updated.

Other social media sites, such as YouTube and Flickr, provide video and photos of the events which are otherwise unlikely to be distributed or published in newspapers given the government's restrictions on the press. The Iranian uprising has also inspired the aggregation of Tweets on a site called WhyWeProtest.net which offers a list of "essential Twitter follows".

Thanks to proxy servers that do not disclose the location of the user, bloggers and other news gatherers are able to access and upload content on sites that have been blocked by the Iranian government. However, government efforts to block the proxies are making online access increasingly more difficult. In response the the heightened censorship, Iranians are asking the international community for aid in creating new proxies which would allow for more reporting.