Fictional dystopias that have pervaded popular culture often share a common theme: Technology is the root of the demise of civil liberties, facilitating the creation of surveillance states and working against its human creators. Take George Orwell’s novel “1984”: Telescreens allow an authoritarian government to keep constant watch over its citizenry and accelerate the spread of state propaganda, maintaining Big Brother’s constant vigilance over inhabitants.
Orwell’s Ministry of Truth bureaucrats would never have imagined how technology could become a facilitator of popular dissent ““ perhaps the sole factor currently pushing a movement toward success by becoming the ire of an all-encompassing government.
In the face of the largest protests since its 1979 revolution, Iran is now encountering similar oppressive circumstances, but ones in which technology is serving to aid, rather than hinder, the people’s progress.
Technology is steadily becoming the deciding factor for the success of demonstrations throughout the country. With Twitter and Facebook becoming the sole means for contact for some citizens to the outside world, these social networking Web sites are evolving from their procrastination-aiding characterizations into vehicles with potentially revolutionary implications.
It is the speed with which information is now shared that is key to this new development. The infamous 1989 photographs of a man boldly standing in front of a tank in Tiananmen Square were smuggled out of the country by unusual methods ranging from concealing the film in a tea bag to hiding it in a hotel room toilet tank to avoid police searches.
Fast forward 20 years to the now widely viewed video of a young Iranian woman named Neda Agha-Soltan, captured on film bleeding to death in the streets of Tehran after being shot by what are assumed to have been pro-government paramilitary forces. Her last minutes, captured on a cell phone’s video camera, were rapidly transmitted around the globe virally, quickly gaining the attention of not only enraged Iranians, but the world media as well.
Agha-Soltan, much like the “Tank Man” before her, has served to expose the brutality of an authoritarian regime, but unlike her predecessor, her now-ubiquitous image has become a rallying cry for the millions of Iranians who have taken to the streets. Her martyr-like status accomplished in minutes a renewed push for protest in a way that was never truly accomplished by the Tiananmen Square photographs.
The amateur videos of the protests have served a major role in their revelation of the magnitude and tone of these protests, with millions of Iranians taking to the streets, oftentimes at risk to their own lives. With uncertainties still clouding the massacres at Tiananmen Square, the extent to which the government was able to suppress public outcry is undeniable. Despite the Iranian government’s own ban on media, these amateur photographs and videos are among the outside world’s only connections to the protesters, with members of the vast Iranian diaspora keeping constant vigilance through their televisions and computer screens.
Looking at Iranian state-run television, though, you would have no idea that these protests were even taking place. Images of talk shows, dramas and censored news reports convey a docile political environment, with the government using the same technological tools against the protesters themselves. Ubiquitous propaganda harden the message of “Everything is A-OK!” while constant threats by Supreme Leader Ali Khameini are broadcast to an equally sizable audience.
False posts on social networking Web sites by government officials are indeed a constant threat, but the fact is that technological advancements are working overwhelmingly in favor of protesters. Police beatings and killings, mass street demonstrations and rooftop chants of “Allah-u-Akbar” at night have served to turn government propaganda on its head, creating a patriotic fervor that cannot be quelled.
Ethan Zuckerman, a fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, told an interviewer on National Public Radio about Twitter’s effect on the people of Moldova, whose protests this past April were similarly fueled by technological advances.
“(Twitter was) being used as a disinformation channel by forces who might have been aligned with the government, essentially trying to scare people away from demonstrating again,” Zuckerman said.
What these protests have created is likely irreversible. After 30 years of an oppressive theocracy, Iranian people of all ages have dared to question a political system that has vehemently cried out against any sort of dissent. Technology is serving as the necessary vehicle in pushing this movement for reform toward success, and it remains to be seen if Iranian protesters will ultimately overthrow their own Big Brother.
E-mail Gharibian at cgharibian@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.