Hello and welcome!
My name is Danny Weininger: aspiring Iranian Studies expert/major at the University of Maryland. In the coming weeks I will post items to this blog in an effort provide my [hopefully ever-growing] readership a little insight into the current situation in Iran and how technology has affected it. This is my first blog and I most definitely look forward to seeing where it goes. I will post many articles with some personal responses as well as my own commentary/reporting. My observations/opinions will be gleaned from an extensive list of many sources (conventional and unconventional): from American and Iranian online news sources (both print and broadcast); from sites like twitter and facebook; and perhaps most importantly from real life Iranians--friends and experts here on the U of Maryland campus. While this blog is part of a semester-long assignment for JOUR289I-Info 3.0, it is important to know I am very much so interested in this topic.
As this is the first week of blogging for the series it is important to establish something of a background just In case you haven't exactly been keeping your ear to the ground.
Here's a very, very bried intro: On June 12, 2009 Iranians voted in one of the most anticipated and contested presidential elections of the the Islamic Republic (IR). Four candidates ran-- incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mehdi Karroubi, Mir Hossein Mousavi, Mohsen Rezai. The first and last of the four were considered the conservatives, while Karroubi and Mousavi were the moderate/liberal candidates. After polling across the country reported record turnout , Iranians seemed hopeful for a fair election. While skepticism existed among some voters that the government may attempt to fabricate votes it was not until a few hours after the polls closed when the landslide victory was in favor of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that outrage began. In the ensuing days and weeks millions of Iranians protested in the streets of cities large and small.
As the outrage poured into the streets it also poured into the internet thru raw video footage taken with camera phones and handheld devices. The videos showed peaceful protests; they showed beatings and murders as their broadcast was one of the most remarkable recordings of civil uprisings in recent history. Most importantly this display ushered in an new era of technological use. Here you can check out the Huffington Post's fantastic and live-updating coverage of the election/post-election. While amateur footage like this had previously found usage in places like CNN's iReport, brave Iranians became the reporters on the ground, as hundreds of foreign journalists were kicked out.
In my next post we'll get a little deeper look into the candidates, specifically Ahmadinejad, Mousavi, and Karroubi as it was these three that really utilized the internet and sought to tap the potential of their younger supporters.
