Social Media – The Iranian Voters Secret Weapon

Online social media has played a major role in allowing the Iranian public to inform the world of the ongoing events within Iran after their recent voting scandal. Much attention has been paid blog posts, tweets on Twitter and other forms of communication received from Iranian citizens since the voting scandal unfolded. In fact the only real means citizens had to effectively oppose the political repression was to turn to their blogs and social networking sites to keep the world informed.

The effectiveness of bloggers to be able to accurately report the facts behind the scenes culminated in their being targeted by Iranian authorities for arrest. Twitter, the rapidly growing social networking site had been repeatedly lauded as the communication channel of choice by Iranian citizens.

What led Iranian citizens to choose online social networking sites as their primary method of communication to the world of the injustices that were occurring?

Here are the 3 main reasons:

Accessibility

Although Iran is not generally regarded as highly sophisticated recent findings indicate more than 70 percent of the population has access to the internet. With this availability citizens have at their disposal a means to communicate with others in a reasonably undetected and otherwise safe manner. In fact with the portability of laptop computers bloggers can continue composing and posting without having to be anchored to a single location.

Ease of Use

The choice of social networking sites such as Twitter as a primary channel of communication by disgruntled Iranian voters was based upon ease of use. These sites do not require any type structure or formatting when sending a message making them ideal choices for quick and detailed reporting of the ongoing events.

Global Audience

Obviously the internet is hooked into a global audience and this allowed any messages sent from Iran to be seen or heard round the world. The word of mouth effect this had enabled these messages to be quickly spread putting more pressure on the Iranian government to take corrective actions.

Even as many blogs continue to be updated out of Iran with new information civil unrest still continues. Hopefully as these messages are spread by word of mouth through the international blogging community world opinion may pressure the Iranian officials into an equitable resolution.

Obviously the influence of effectiveness of online social media sites has made a huge impact on the Iranian voting scandal. The ability to report events as they occurred thru blog posts and other online social networking sites allowed Iranian citizens to spread the word rapidly to a concerned world. The ease of use, accessibility, and the global audience were the 3 main reasons behind the selection of social sites as the primary communication tool utilized. For world news or simple marketing purposes, both blogging and online social communities continue to prove how rapidly and effectively they can spread the word.