Date:Sun, 26 Jul 2009 08:19:49 +0300
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TEL AVIV NOTES - "The Power of 140 Characters: Twitter in the
Middle East"
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Editor: Bruce Maddy-Weitzman July 26, 2009
The Power of 140 Characters: Twitter in the Middle East
Tal Pavel
The massive, sustained protests in Iran this past
month against the regime’s apparent falsification
of the presidential election results was enabled
by widespread employment of new communication
technologies. Among them is Twitter, the
micro-blog which enables its users to distribute
short messages of no more than 140 characters
('Tweets') via the Internet, including by way of
cellular phones. One may follow their favorite
'Tweets', whether those of individuals or
announcements by groups, by visiting the Twitter website <twitter.com>.
Apart from serving as an additional means of
personal communication, Twitter is used in the
Arab-Islamic Middle East by a whole range of
groups and individuals, covering the entire gamut
of society. 'Tweets' are employed by political
and social movements, religious websites and
Islamic cultural centers, as well as for the
promotion of films, fashion and commerce. News
organizations, such as CNN, the BBC (especially
its Persian language service), Al-Jazeera and the
Voice of America all have popular Twitter feeds.
Twitter speeds up the capacity to deliver the
news because of its restricted structure, so much
so that many people choose it over newspapers as their primary news source.
As a parallel information universe, Twitter
enables the dissemination of information,
mobilization of public opinion and evasion of
governmental censors. In Syria, for example,
Twitter enabled a wave of protests against the
decision by the website, 'LinkedIn' – a social
networking geared towards those interested in
business – to block its services in Syria, and
the decision was ultimately reversed. Earlier
this year in Iran, Twitter was employed by 'the
March 18th movement' in remembrance of the
Iranian blogger, Omid Razah, who died in prison
on that date, and to pressure the authorities to
release seven Bahai leaders that were arrested during the month of May.
A particularly powerful demonstration of
Twitter’s potential came following the arrest of
an American journalism student in Egypt while
filming a demonstration. He immediately sent a
message via his cell phone announcing his arrest
to 48 "followers" on Twitter, and the message
quickly spread around the world. As a result of
the ensuing attention and entreaties, he was
quickly released. Similarly, the well-known
Egyptian blogger, Wa'el Abbas, was quick to
publicize his arrest and subsequent experiences
with the police this past April, causing embarrassment to Egyptian officialdom.
The usages of Twitter by women in the Arab world
are especially varied, not surprisingly, given
the relative anonymity it provides to the user.
Twitter allows women to search for spouses,
describe their lives, discuss issues pertaining
to the status of Muslim women in their societies,
and communicate and show solidarity with
like-minded individuals, for example, lesbians.
Women from Saudi Arabia tend to hide their
personal 'Tweets' so that only those who have
received their permission in advance can read
their announcements. Women from most other Arab
societies, which are socially more open and less
hierarchical than Saudi Arabia, are more likely
to enable their 'Tweets' to be read by all.
Women’s advocacy groups make good use of Twitter:
for example, the Egyptian group 'All of Us are
Laila' has fought against the inequality in
women’s daily lives, in Egypt and the Arab world
in general, for the last three years. So does
Queen Rania of Jordan, who writes about diverse
subjects on an almost daily basis, to a readership of about 125,000.
To be sure, there are those who belittle
Twitter’s reliability as a source of information,
pointing to its maximum limit of 140 characters
per item, and the instant worldwide dissemination
of Twitter items without any cross-checking
information to confirm their truthfulness. But
these limitations are also the basis of its
strength. Twitter serves as a speedy and direct
platform able to bypass official state media
oversight and the limitations on free speech by
authoritarian governments. In the Middle East, in
particular, it is nearly the only path for
different social groups to get their messages
across without government interference.
The power of Twitter in transmitting onsite and
immediate reporting was highlighted in the months
leading up to the Iranian presidential elections
and in the subsequent demonstrations against the
falsification of the results. Along with other
on-line social networks, Twitter served as an
almost exclusive source for the unfolding events in the streets of Tehran.
However, Middle Eastern governments have not
remained passive in the face of the rapid
expansion of the new media, and particularly of
on-line social networks that increase the
possibilities for individual action and
challenges to governments. Authorities around
the region have invested considerable efforts in
regulating and restricting these new means of
communication. For example, the Dubai government
partially blocked the use of the highly popular
social networking Facebook website and the
internet voice and video Skype program, claiming
that their action was justified by "content that
was not concurrent with the religious, cultural,
political, and moral values of the United Arab
Emirates." Iran has cracked down heavily on
Twitter and other social networking sites. Not
only has it blocked access to particular internet
sites, it has also installed content filters and
monitored traffic on them, thanks to Nokia
Siemens Networks’ (NSN) features. The ability to
monitor internet and Nokia cellular phone traffic
resulted in the arrests of a number of persons
transmitting reports about the unfolding events
in Iran, resulting in a consumer boycott in Iran
of Nokia phones as an act of protest.
Time will tell regarding the impact of Twitter on
the relations between Middle Eastern
authoritarian governments and their citizens. In
the meantime, Twitter has demonstrated a capacity
to serve as a means for continuous and rapid
dissemination of information among wide sectors
of the population. To be sure, this alone cannot
bring about far-reaching social change or a
fundamental expansion of political and social
freedom, but it certainly carries much potential,
and even inspires hope among long-disenfranchised
and cynical Middle Eastern publics.
Dr. Tal Pavel is a specialist in internet and technology
TEL AVIV NOTES is published with the support of the V. Sorell Foundation
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