Largely a gratuitous icon post

[wshaffer]

Been glued to Twitter most of the morning, as if political change in Iran is somehow going to happen faster through the sheer good will of lots of Internet spectators.

It does make me think about how the way I follow the news has changed over time. I can remember watching the Berlin wall come down on CNN; I remember following the collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe mostly through plain old-fashioned print journalism in, of all places, Paris Match. On September 11, 2001, I learned about what was happening largely through blogs, starting with this post of Mary Anne's.

With recent events, I'm actually getting most of my news from fairly traditional news sources (BBC, guardian.co.uk), but Twitter is adding an interesting personal dimension. One of the twitter accounts I'm following belongs to a student at Tehran University. In the midst of reporting that his dorm is surrounded by paramilitary forces, he adds that the head of the University has announced that exams will not be rescheduled. University administration - the same everywhere.

Comments

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

I'm not on Twitter, so I've been following this on the radio (thank you, NPR and BBC) and through posts pointing me to to Twitter aggregations. It feels like Tianenmien, that period of hope and songs followed by tanks, like the Philippine people's revolution, hope and songs followed by victory. Right now, it could still go either way.

Hell, that first Iranian revolution, when they threw out the Shah, even that seemed like a glorious, relatively peaceful change for the better, at first.

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean w/r/t Twitter.

And yes, it's interesting to see the synthesis of traditional media such as BBC and Guardian with Twitter.

*facepalm* at the university admins.

Thinking of putting together a 'green' icon saying "Information is the currency of democracy.--Thomas Jefferson".