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Case Study: Twitter Revolution in Iran
“Twitter revolution” is distinguished from other forms of activism because of the means by which the cyber activists communicate and aggregate through Twitter. It is an example of how social media facilitates communication among people globally in political revolutions. It challenges the traditional relationship between political authorities and popular, allowing the powerless to “collaborate, coordinate, and give voice to their concerns”.

During 2009–2010 Iranian election protests, Twitter and other similar websites succeeded in spreading the information and let people know around the world what was going on in Iran, while the mainstream, western media such as CNN failed to cover the news. According to Evgeny Morozov, a blogger for Foreign Policy magazine, the widespread belief that Twitter was the major platform of Iranian youth to plan mass scale protests online lacks sufficient supporting evidence, because in this way the authorities would be able to monitor and suppress the movement. Instead, Twitter is mainly “used to publicize protests that are already going on—and bring the world's attention to the acts of violence committed by the regime”. Here Twitter had played a role beyond its intended function as social media where people get connected to their acquaintances and friends online. “Without Twitter the people of Iran would not have felt empowered and confident to stand up for freedom and democracy,” Mark Pfeifle, a former national-security adviser wrote. The contribution of Twitter in disseminating news from Green Revolution is recognized by Obama administration. On June 15th afternoon, the State Department official Jared Cohen sent Twitter an email, requesting it to “delay scheduled maintenance of its global network, which would have cut off service while Iranians were using Twitter to swap information and inform the outside world about the mushrooming protests around Tehran”.

However, some scholars also doubt the significance of Twitter’s role in the political upheaval. Golnaz Esfandiari wrote in Foreign Policy magazine, “Simply put: there was no Twitter Revolution inside Iran.” The majority of Twitter posts concerning demonstrations were products of Western users and the voice of native Iranian writing tweets in Farsi about the situation in their country is absent. David Rothkopf proposes that the idea of “Twitter revolution” is an overstatement. Even though it raised political awareness and increase participation through retweeting and reposting, there is no involvement of sacrifice, courage, physical confrontation and risk that real revolutions and real changes require.

Case Study: Twitter Revolution in Egypt
In Egypt Revolution of 2011, the oppositional movement against the ruling of Mubarak was active on various platforms of social media. For example, “the hashtag #Jan25th was used to mobilize protesters on Twitter” to join the demonstration on Jan 25th on Tahrir Square. Along with other methods such as text message, flyers and words of mouth, it drew a crowd of 80,000 to the street of Cairo on that day. Moreover, Twitter was applied to communicate with the audience outside Egypt to “globalized the movement and win international support to protect and sustain the uprising”. The worldwide audience was also able to have constant update with the situation in Egypt, besides simply listening to the State’s point of view. As consequences, the revolution succeeded in the resignation of Mubarak in February 11th, ending his dictatorship lasted for over 3 decades. An article in the magazine Wired states that social media did not cause the Egypt revolution. Rather, Twitter and Facebook were more like “a spark and an accelerant”, “catalyzing pro-democracy movements”. They have had the most potent impact in “what has shocked most observers of the current Egyptian scene: the sheer speed with which the regime fell — 18 days”.