[liberationtech] Fwd: Twitter and Iran election

[Neema Moraveji]

Yes there are similarities; the WTO protest was more localized - the
Iran protests have turned into a very global, mixed-medium approach.

Talk about "liberation technologies."  This is our time to shine.
Here is some of the latest news from Iranian networks:

- Check out http://iranfax.org (fax to a number, they will post it on
the site; low-tech but possibly effective - no faxes received yet)
- People abroad are setting up their personal computers to act as
proxies (and sending IPs to Iran) so people inside in Iran can get to
news sources
- People abroad are changing Twitter timezones to Iran (I don't really
get this one but anyway)
- People are posting Picasa/Flickr albums and them people abroad
re-post, re-tweet, propagate and catapult the content to new social
networks
- A site, Persianwiki, has been setup that essentially mirrors news
items from main sites so that locals inside Iran can view it
- Etc.

People are trying to figure out how to help the people inside Iran...
a) ...post photos and videos easily from within Iran to the outside.
b) ...avoid sites getting shut down by the government (bbc, youtube,
facebook, twitter, etc.).
c) ...prepare for possible complete shutdown of access to Internet
outside of Iran.
d) ...communicate in manners more robust than the Internet -- mobiles
are also susceptible to towers, which are supposedly shut down 5pm-1am
daily.

If you know of any technologies or prior work related to this effort,
please send them to me.

One idea: a BitTorrent-like p2p content network such that content
(from bbc, nytimes, etc.) can be sucked down from only ONE computer
and then other requests from within Iran can access it (and somehow
confirm its credibility) without having to leave the Iran network.
Similarly, when somebody has a video to upload, they don't have to
rely on their single connection to youtube.com, the work can be
distributed among the entire Iranian network.  This idea is like a
bi-directional SETI program?  Does that make sense?

Please send any ideas, thanks.
Neema


On Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 3:35 PM, Yosem Companys<companys at stanford.edu> wrote:
> Hi Neema,
>
> That is very interesting.  Sounds very similar to what the WTO
> protesters put together back in 1998 (?).  It definitely would be
> interesting for someone to study how that process happens from the
> technical end.
>
> If anyone knows of someone working on this topic, please let me know.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Yosem
>
> On Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 5:21 PM, Neema Moraveji<neema at stanford.edu> wrote:
>> There's more than just Twitter, too.  People abroad are setting up
>> their personal computers as proxies to enable Iranians in Iran to use
>> those computers to circumvent censors.  I have never heard of such a
>> thing.  I an Iranian-American and am receiving lots of interesting
>> related emails - it would be great to put together to study how the
>> masses are appropriating social media.
>>
>> On Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 4:28 PM, Yosem Companys<companys at stanford.edu> wrote:
>>> fyi
>>>
>>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>>> From: Dario Taraborelli <dario.taraborelli at gmail.com>
>>> Date: Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 7:12 PM
>>> Subject: Twitter and Iran election
>>>
>>> What's happening right now on Twitter (in terms of sheer volume [1]
>>> and use of real-time communication to fight censorship [2]) has no
>>> precedent (to my knowledge) in the history of social media.
>>>
>>> Does anyone know of a good visualization service (similar to the one
>>> mapping the US election [3]) to appreciate this?
>>>
>>> Dario
>>>
>>> [1] http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23IranElection
>>> [2] http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10265462-2.html
>>> [3] http://projects.flowingdata.com/inauguration/
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Dario Taraborelli
>>> Research Fellow
>>>
>>> Centre for Research in Social Simulation
>>> Department of Sociology
>>> University of Surrey
>>> Guildford GU2 7XH
>>> United Kingdom
>>>
>>> +44 (0)1483 683961
>>> http://nitens.org/taraborelli
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> liberationtech mailing list
>>> liberationtech at lists.stanford.edu
>>> https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech
>>>
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>