twitter iran and the west

First, can I ask you to forgive whatever irony you may find in the fact that these aimless half-sketched ideas, these tepid and juvenile ramblings make their way to you the way they do (i.e.via a blog); for it is this type of development – or the omnipresent phenomenon commonly refered to as “new media” – which has captured my attention. More, it is the way we as a society use these tools that interests me.

Being part of a generation that has grown up, with the internet, I have been party to both the theoretical debates and the practical presence of this “new media”. While social networking sites, amateur broadcasting channels and cyber-industry have become an unavoidable feature of my everyday life, so to have I been exposed to the academic world’s idealistic prophesies about the potential of the internet to make the world a smaller, flatter and, therefore, safer place… supposedly. The globalisation of ideas, uncensored international dialogues, the proliferation of human rights, an end to all borders. It was, of course, the insatiable growth of media (both new and old) which brought down communism in Eastern Europe. So the likes of myspace, youtube or twitter too will bring down the last remaining dictatorships and the few enduring beacons of oppression. Or so the argument goes.

After all, how can nations like Iran or Saudi Arabia, Burma or China, maintain their grasp on the minds of a people who are only a the flick of a switch and the touch of a button away from viewing the glowing images of our freedom? (or at very least a firewall message that reaffirms the notion that there is more to the world than their leaders will allow them to see). Well, it’s simple. This utopian idea of – sorry there’s no better way to put it – a globalised world, free from tyranny and oppression because of the simple fact that every human being knows their rights, relies on one major thing... our ability – and by us, I mean the West – to set that shining example of how to use the freedoms endowed by our governments and our technology.

But instead, and I don’t wish to be flippant here, if a Saudi woman finds her way onto google, yahoo or youtube (and lets make no mistake here, a Saudi woman being allowed near a computer would be a triumph for freedom and democracy) and looks for what her sisters in the west are doing with those unalienable rights they’ve been endowed with, it seems there’s probably a 1% chance (and I’m being generous here) she’ll see Hillary Clinton or Angela Merkel addressing foreign diplomats wearing a powersuit and a 99% chance they’ll see Paris Hilton undressing the camera with her eyes wearing next to nothing at all.

So, as we add a new band’s fanpage to our myspace and sign up for MC Hammer or Elijah Wood’s tweets, we fail to uphold our end of the bargain. But, fortunately, that’s not where this ends, because –and maybe this is an innate part of being from a developing (or regressing) country and living under dictatorship – some people can take the initiative. Because, while Britain bemoans the corruption of its politicians in near silence – as the daily headlines about excessive expenses claims and falsified tax exemptions is barely audible above the chatter of modern life – it is left to a country like Iran to show us the capability of the mediums that we – with such noble intentions – created, and it is left to Iran to realise the potential of the mediums which are imbued from/by our ivory towers with such grand ideas and aims.

Yes, it appears as though the people of a country we so often malign for being backward-looking, religiously fundamentalist and socially regressive, have taken a step ahead of us when it comes to utilising these modern luxuries for something constructive. the dichotomy couldn’t be clearer; while Iranian protesters used Twitter to arrange their protests against last week’s rigged elections and youtube to broadcast footage from streets where foreign journalists were banned (and were actually obeying the ban) we were lost in the humdrum and chatter of everyday life. Meanwhile, Habitat were on a little consumerism crusade of their own – trying to steal an extra few customers for their summer catalogue from the leagues of pro-democracy protesters and, in doing so, scoring a few more points for those who say the West is loosing (or has lost) it’s course.