Lubbock Left

If you want to keep up with the disputed Iran Election, online new media is where it’s at.

From Xeni Jardin at BoingBoing, I found a great set of resources for following the events up close: Cyrus’ list. Also, Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic has been providing up-to-the-second coverage. Lastly, Huffington Post has been able to keep up with events in Iran as well.

New media is currently providing serious coverage of a situation that traditional media cannot. This point is one that has already been echoing in the traditional media: new media — mostly Twitter — have been able to cover the unrest in Iran directly in a way that traditional media cannot. This is because Twitter, Facebook, and similar services are being used for the first time in a revolutionary / civic unrest manner on a massive scale while proper journalists have been shut out by the Iranian government. It’s so effective that our own State Department has asked Twitter to delay a planned upgrade (which would have shut down twitter briefly) until things settle down.

In contrast, GOP superstars like Newt Gingrich use Twitter to make snide remarks about the President or to falsely accuse Supreme Court nominees of racism. Sen Chuck Grassley recently twittered to, I guess, show the world that he has the communication skills of an eight-year-old.

Most people just use Twitter to microblog their daily lives and to keep up with friends and events in their area. The potential is there, though, for new media to be as essential in our own politics as it is currently for the Iranians. I think our own next few election cycles are going to be fascinating precisely for this reason.

Finally, have a cartoon:

(the bird + Iranian flag image above is from Ars Technica)