Ein Jahr Twitter-Revolution im Iran – oder so

Am Samstag ist der Jahrestag der sogenannten Twitter-Revolution im Iran. Mittlerweile sind viele Medien etwas kritischer geworden, was die eigene Berichterstattung vor einem Jahr betrifft. Auch in Deutschland werden wir vermutlich in den kommenden Tagen dazu Artikel finden. Bisher finde ich die aber nur im Ausland. Hier sind zwei empfehlenswerte Quellen dazu:

Foreign Policy: The Twitter Devolution – Far from being a tool of revolution in Iran over the last year, the Internet, in many ways, just complicated the picture.

Before one of the major Iranian protests of the past year, a journalist in Germany showed me a list of three prominent Twitter accounts that were commenting on the events in Tehran and asked me if I know the identities of the contributors. I told her I did, but she seemed disappointed when I told her that one of them was in the United States, one was in Turkey, and the third – who specialized in urging people to „take to the streets“ – was based in Switzerland.

The Guardian: Iran’s ‚Twitter revolution’ was exaggerated, says editor.

Such hyperbole reveals more about western fantasies for new media than the reality in Iran, argues Hamid Tehrani, the Persian editor of the blogging network Global Voices. „The west was focused not on the Iranian people but on the role of western technology,“ he says. „Twitter was important in publicising what was happening, but its role was overemphasised.“

Mehr kritischen Hintergrund zur Thematik findet sich im Netzpolitik-Podcast Folge 083 mit Evgeny Morozov.