Twitter forms online battleground in disputed Iranian election

TWITTER, the micro-blogging site, has this week been a critical player in the ongoing dispute over the Iranian election result.

Opposition activists especially have utilised the service to great effect, as a week after the election, the stream of news coming out of the country has slowed to a trickle as more and more foreign press credentials are revoked and journalist visas expire.

Earlier in the week, this was being hailed a positive development as the Iranian government had made it nearly impossible for traditional media outlets to report from the streets of Tehran, never mind outlying provinces and cities. The Iranian government’s media crackdown took such a toll that even the US State Department admitted on Tuesday to having asked Twitter to delay scheduled maintenance that would have cut its service in Iran.

However, as the week has drawn on media outlets have been forced to rely on amateur video and information gleaned from Twitter and other blogs, which are often unverifiable. This has lead a number of commentators to question whether we are being given a true picture – no doubt there is vast opposition to Ahmadinejad, as the huge street protests confirm. Yet the mechanisms that are allowing information to creep out of Iran at the moment are those that favour the tech savvy, urban, middle class and young – all of whom are considerably more likely to support Mir Hussein and the opposition.

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