The coverage of the Iranian elections has fascinated me. Most of the reporting I’ve read seems based on very little information. I don’t know that anyone really expected President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to lose this election, though the late groundswell of support for his opponent, Mir Hussein Moussavi, seems to have suprised a lot of Iran-watchers. Most of the reporting I’ve seen was from journalists based in Tehran, and it seems there that youth were very active in supportinve Moussavi. This election featured even featured a televised debate, in which Admadinejad was very aggressive in attacking his opponent. It seems that the nickname for this election is the “green tsunami.”
With all the talk earlier this year of the “Twitter Revolution” in Moldova, I am surprised that the affect of new media on the electoral outcomes and the subsequent protests isn’t more of a focus of attention. When the government temporarily blocked Facebook, that became front page news, and it was widely reported that this was an attempt to control youth. Most of the pictures of this green tsunami have focused on young men and even more prominently young women, showing their support for the moderate Moussavi. I suspect that new media has had more of an effect on these elections and will have on thier aftermath than they had in Moldova. I’m going to try to learn more about youth and new media in Iran. I think this, more than the outcome of the election, is the real news.
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