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new media & society
2014, Vol. 16(1) 91 –109
© The Author(s) 2013
Reprints and permissions:
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DOI: 10.1177/1461444813479594
nms.sagepub.com
Will politics be tweeted?
New media use by Iranian
youth in 2011
Magdalena Wojcieszak
IE University, Spain
Briar Smith
University of Pennsylvania, USA
Abstract
The uprisings after the 2009 elections in Iran generated debate on new media’s potential
to affect dissent in authoritarian countries. We surveyed 2800 young, educated,
metropolitan, and technologically savvy Iranians over a year after the election and during
the uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa to examine what sources these youth
use for information, the extent to which they rely on new media for political exchanges,
their experiences with online censorship, and political efficacy as related to new media.
Although the Internet was stated as the most important news outlet, state-controlled
television was often used, and Twitter was the least prevalent new media platform.
Personal issues and IT/science were more often discussed via new media than politics.
Further, it was using new media, not talking politics online, that predicted the frequency
with which respondents encountered blocked websites online and also perceptions of
their ownpolitical efficacy. Although our findings may support voices that are skeptical
about technology’s ability to sustain revolution, we also identify what can be described
as hubs of politicized Iranian youth.
Keywords
Facebook Revolution, Green Revolution, Internet censorship, Iran, Iranian elections,
Iranian public sphere, media consumption, social media use, Twitter Revolution
Corresponding author:
Magdalena Wojcieszak, IE School of Communication, IE University, Madrid, Spain.
Email: magdalena.wojcieszak@ie.edu
479594NMS
16110.1177/1461444813479594new media & societyWojcieszak and Smith
2013
Article
92 new media & society 16(1)
The popular uprisings that followed the contested 2009 elections in Iran generated
substantial discussion on the potential for new information and communication tech-
nologies to affect dissent and activist organization in authoritarian countries. The
massive upheavals that unfolded and spread through the Middle East and North Africa
in 2011 intensified the interest among scholars, the general public, and civil society
advocates in how tools such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are used for political
strategizing and social mobilization.
Both in Iran and during the collective movements termed the “Arab Spring,” some
reformist activists deployed new media to encourage compatriots to take to the streets,
and there were spikes in online revolutionary conversations before major events on the
ground (Howard et al., 2011). These observations contributed to the idea that new media
played a central role in these events, a conviction that led to attractive monikers such as
“Twitter/Facebook Revolutions.”
Other observers, however, were skeptical of claims that the uprisings in Iran and
the “Arab Spring” were substantially strengthened by new communication technolo-
gies. Some stated that revolutions “will not be tweeted,” noting that blogs, Twitter, and
Facebook were not used for widespread strategizing and organizing (Gladwell, 2010).
These commentators observed that most Twitter feeds after the election originated
outside Iran and reminded the public that the states themselves use new media as a
means to target their perceived enemies and to advance in the so-called “soft war”
(Morozov, 2011).
To some extent, the conclusions drawn depend on where one looks for evidence. An
interview with an Iranian political blogger will lead one to conclude that blogs and social
media facilitated mobilization. Similarly, analyzing political tweets (see Howard, 2009)
will likely lead to overemphasis of the role played by Twitter in Iran and the greater
Middle East (Hofheinz, 2011).
In this study, we update and extend this discussion, approaching it from a different
angle. We rely on survey data from 2800 young Iranians recruited through an online
file-sharing platform in early 2011 in order to shed light on the sources that Iranian
youth use for information. We differentiate between traditional media, face-to-face
talk, public spaces, and religious leaders, among other potential sources, and also pay
particular attention to websites, blogs, Twitter, and text messages. We further examine
the topics Iranian youth communicate about via new media to assess the relative preva-
lence of sociopolitical issues. Moreover, we test the extent of online censorship and of
the likely use of circumvention tools, and also analyze whether online activities and
experiences of online censorship affect the extent to which new media are linked with
individual political efficacy.
This sample, which uses the Internet to a greater extent and at higher speeds than the
general population and is technologically savvy, has a collective profile that could well
characterize young activists during the uprisings in Iran in 2009, allowing us to exam-
ine whether and how Iranian youth employ new media for political purposes in Iran’s
continually politicized environment. Examining these topics in 2011, over a year after
the contested elections and during the uprisings in the greater Middle East, may shed
some light on the claims regarding the extent to which people use Twitter or Facebook
for political or revolutionary activity. Our study cannot speak to new media use before,
Wojcieszak and Smith 93
during, and directly after the contested Iranian election in 2009; nevertheless, one
would hope that once engaged with politics on new media platforms, citizens would
continue using these media for political exchanges, especially during the wide-scale
mobilizing in the region and as sustained economic and political dissatisfaction contin-
ued to simmer in Iran (Howard, 2010).
Utopian, dystopian, realistic: new media after the 2009
election in Iran
After the Iranian presidential elections in June 2009, thousands of people took to the
streets in Tehran to protest what they believed was a victory stolen from reformist
candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi by the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The
Iranian government reacted to these uprisings, now known as the Green Movement, by
intimidating and arresting journalists and activists and seeking to prevent information
reaching the international public. Concurrently, the conservative leadership was
spreading propagandistic messages claiming the protests were being encouraged by
outside enemies (Fathi, 2010).
In this context, people who had the necessary access and know-how turned to new
media to build networks, coordinate protests, spread information, and seek external
support. Emphasizing that the protests in Tehran were facilitated by blogs, Twitter, and
Facebook, international media quickly rebranded the popular revolt a “Twitter
Revolution,” with the media asking: “[h]ow did we have revolutions before Twitter?”
(Segan, 2009). Some political analysts, following National Journal White House cor-
respondent Marc Ambinder’s lead, also cast Twitter as a “protagonal technology that
enabled the powerless to survive a brutal crackdown and information blackout by the
ruling authorities” (Ambinder, 2009). Former US National Security Adviser Mark
Pfeifle stated that Twitter should get the Nobel Peace Prize, because “without Twitter,
the people of Iran would not have felt empowered and confident to stand up for freedom
and democracy” (in Esfandiari, 2010). The US State Department even reportedly asked
Twitter to delay scheduled maintenance to allow Iranians to communicate (Pleming,
2009).
Various factors contributed to making new media an effective tool for activists in Iran,
where the median age is 26 and about half of the population is under the age of 35.
Cellphone use is widespread, with nearly 100% of the population using them (Iran
Telecommunications Report, 2012). Moreover, the number of Internet users has been
increasing. In 2000, Iran had fewer than one million users; in 2010, over 43% of Iran’s
estimated 75 million population used the Internet (Internet World Stats - Usage and
Population Statistics, 2011), and between 43% (BBG/Gallup, 2012) and 47% (Wojcieszak
et al., 2012) reported having Internet access at home in 2012. The Iranian blogosphere is
among the fastest growing in the Middle East, and—with more than 700,000 active
blogs—Persian is the second most used language in the blogosphere (Baavur-Hendelman,
2007; Bucar and Fazaeli, 2008; Kelly and Etling, 2008; Sreberny and Khiabany, 2007).
Furthermore, the government’s pervasive censorship of the media has given people addi-
tional incentive to turn to the Internet for news and information.
