Tweeting Iran: Dodging media crackdown in 140 characters or less

An opposition activist spreads word of an upcoming protest in the streets of Tehran. Another posts pictures of clashes between demonstrators and police.

As Iran's government cracks down on traditional media after the country's disputed presidential election, tech-savvy Iranians have turned to the microblogging site Twitter.

Its use to organize and send pictures and messages to the outside world - in real time as events unfolded - was a powerful example of how such tools can overcome government attempts at censorship.

"When I'm not connected to Twitter it means that I'm disconnected from the world because the state TV doesn't report many things!" wrote one Twitter user who identifies himself as hamednz and communicated through e-mail. His profile says he lives in Rasht, a city to the north of Tehran near the Caspian Sea.

Like all the Twitter users in Iran who agreed to be interviewed for this story, hamednz did not want his identity revealed for fear of retribution from government authorities.

In Iran, as in many still-developing countries, Internet usage is mostly still a phenomenon of the affluent, the youth and city-dwellers - meaning Twitter and other networks are used mostly by the young and liberal - and may overemphasize their numbers while ignoring more-conservative political sentiments among the non-connected.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone acknowledged the limited group of users in Iran, who don't necessarily represent the mainstream. "Because Twitter is still a nascent service the sentiment is likely narrow," Stone said in an e-mail Monday.

"However, we noticed people creating accounts during the riots presumably because they heard Twitter was the most efficient way to discover and share what was happening in the moment," Stone wrote.

Twitter had planned to go down for 90 minutes Monday for maintenance, but rescheduled it citing the role Twitter is currently playing as an important communication tool in Iran, according to a notice posted on its Web site. The maintenance will instead happen a day later, when it is 1:30 a.m. in Iran.

Supporters of reformist challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi are more likely to use Twitter and Facebook. Poorer, less-educated voters have flocked to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Iranians must outsmart government blocking to use Twitter, on which users post messages limited to 140 characters called tweets.

Twitter has been used as an organizing tool to tell people about upcoming events such as this tweet Monday from a user identified as alirezasha: "today, 4 P.M. a CALM protest with Karoubi and Mousavi/confirmed by Karoubi's campaign manager and VP."

Other users post pictures of protests or what appears to be government authorities chasing and beating protesters.

One Twitter user who identified himself only as Mohsen, speaking from Tehran, said while he's been using Twitter for about two years, he's intensified his tweets over the last few days.

He said he sends alerts about what I see in the streets, about police hitting people, and "people who are not police who are hitting Mir Hossein supporters," he said. "These are frames of horror and hate. I think one of the strategies the authorities are doing is stopping news and information, and I use whatever I can to stop them from doing that."

On Monday, the Twitter site showed topics that were getting the most attention, including IranElection, Mousavi and Tehran. In one 10-minute period, 12 users who identified themselves as being within 50 miles of Tehran posted Tweets.

Some media such as The Associated Press and others often monitor sites such as Twitter, looking for news tips and to assess the general mood.

Even actor Ashton Kutcher, one of Twitter's biggest fans, has weighed in on the elections. He tweeted: "I think that truly (sic) the only people that can change things in Iran are the Iranians themselves and they seem to be speaking their minds now".

Twitter has played a role in other world political events. This April,Iran, said Twitter is seen by many Iranians as a professional tool for journalists and bloggers.

Gaurav Mishra, the 2008-09 Yahoo Fellow at Georgetown University, said he hasn't seen any evidence in past events such as the Moldova elections that Twitter was the dominant way people are organizing.

"It's sometimes difficult to differentiate the hype from the media," he said." Just because people are tweeting about something doesn't mean that there's actually coordination involved."