Iranian opposition showing its green colours and discontent following the Iranian presidential election 12 June. Photo: Syma Sayyah/Payvand.com

Governments use social networks as platforms for propaganda, and some to identify and crack down on activists. In a world where everyone can join the news stream, traditional professional media are needed more than ever, says IMS Director Jesper Højberg

- You are not alone!
This is not meant as a nice gesture of solidarity – quite the contrary. With this message, Mahmood Enayat, Iranian blogger and doctoral student at the Oxford Internet Institute, conveys a message of caution to people who actively engage in communicating on the Internet’s social networks.

-  This year, the Iranian government has allocated 500 million USD to conduct a “soft war”. This should tell us all that we are not acting in a vacuum on the Internet. As easily as you can go online and share your views, so can any government or regime produce media themselves, says Mahmood Enayat.

Living in the UK, Mahmood Enayat has analysed the use of social media as a conveyer of news in connection with the Iranian elections in June 2009 that brought thousands of Iranians onto the streets to show their discontent. In connection with a debate organised in Copenhagen by IMS jointly with MS Action Aid Denmark last week, Mahmood Enayat was invited to Denmark to present the results of his research.

He explains that the Iranian government is using information on social networks, blogs etc to identify and crack down on people with different opinions. As a consequence, the social networks which provided a tool through which witnesses of last summer’s violent events could share their accounts with the world at a time when other sources were silenced, have now become the most risky place for activists to vent their views.

-  As part of the Iranian ‘cyber war’ the government is using information on social networks, blogs etc. to identify activist networks and to attack them, he says.

Recordings of traffic on Facebook around the time of the Iranian elections show, that Facebook was filtered three times by the Iranian authorities just before and right after the elections on 12 June 2009.

Self-censorship on the rise

As a token of how successful the Iranian government seems to be in their cyber space control, Mahmood Enayat claims that many bloggers have resorted to debating harmless issues. Others have been silenced – and some have switched to anonymous blogs.

The so-called “Twitter revolution”

International media were quick to name the phenomenon a “twitter revolution” referring to the use of the news sharing service Twitter. But in fact, this was never a Twitter revolution, he says:

- My findings show that 480,000 identities contributed to the twitter debates and that 70 percent of the content was produced by 10 percent of the users.

- Facebook might have helped coordinate and unify voices of dissent, but these voices were mostly sitting outside Iran. Social networks were not used to mobilise protesters in the streets, Mahmood Enayat concludes.

Traditional media the custodians of news sources

In Mahmood Enayat’s view, the case of Iran served to demonstrate that social media acted as a medium to channel information about what happened inside Iran to especially international media, who could not access Iran.

- But we are naïve to dismiss conventional media. Connecting social media to conventional media boosted everything in the case of Iran, Mahmood Enayat says.

Jesper Højberg, executive director of IMS concurs with Mahmood Enayat, saying that the case of Iran puts the professional values of traditional media back in the front seat:

- Media are the custodians of news sources. Verifying information and putting information into a context is what traditional media are trained to do. Social networks and personal blogs on the Internet have become an integral part of the list of sources used by media - on par with other sources of information. But there is still a need for professional media to be the custodians of verified and reliable news to help people navigate in the tsunami of information directed at us every day.

Back to basics: Access to information

In the words of Mahmood Enayat, there is a need to take one step back and zoom in on access to information:

- Just because it is there, doesn’t mean people have access.

He explains that a government-sponsored survey suggests that 11 percent of the Iranians have access to the Internet of which 30 percent live in Teheran, and only 3 percent are based in the rural areas. Users are predominantly highly educated people representing the upper middle classes.

- If you want to mobilise a social movement, you need to reach out broadly. The Internet does not fulfil this requirement at the moment in Iran, he says.  

Other media covering Mahmood enayat's visit:

Dagbladet Information

Journalisten

If you are interested in more news about Iran, click here.

For more news about World Press Freedom Day:

UNESCO

Jyllands-Posten

Danish Union of Journalists

Reporters Without Borders, predators, 2010

Committee to Protect Journalists