Furniture company Habitats Twitter account used hashtags such as #Iranelection and #Mousavi in order to ensure the company’s messages regarding their products would be seen by a mass audience. Twitter members use hashtags to help them narrow their searches and the use of Twitter has proved an invaluable way of getting information out of the heavily censored country. Read more here
China has confirmed it will continue with plans to force every computer in the country to run controversial filtering program Green Dam. The move follows news that Google have agreed to filter search results in China to screen out pornographic or explicit material. In a Twitter posting, prominent blogger Ai Weiwei appealed for an Internet boycott on the softwares launch in July, the same day of the anniversary to mark founding of the Chinese Communist Party. Read more here
It’s time to confront technology companies in the West on the role they play in censorship worldwide, says Claire Ulrich
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The protests in Iran have been seen by many as conclusively proving the value of the Internet in organising and reporting civil movements.
Perhaps the tech-savviness is the only unsurprising element of the events of the past few days. Despite restrictions, Iran’s youth are remarkably active on the web, with Farsi the fourth most prevalant language in the blogosphere. As was pointed out at Internet Sans Frontieres:
“In 1979 revolutionary songs started to fill the streets of Tehran while the Shah was boarding the plane that brought him out of the country. Today the web is spreading and amplifying the news of the ongoing protests at last week’s election results.
In Iran there are more than six million web users, the majority of whom are under 25.”
Particular attention has been paid to the events on Twitter, with thousands around the world following #IranElection.
At friendfeed.com, you can view an aggregation of all related tweets coming out of Iran.
Citizen photojournalism hub Demotix is hosting pictures from its contributors in Iran here.
As foreign media have now been severely restricted (the BBC having already experienced jamming since Friday afternoon), these citizen sources may be the only way to find out what’s happening.