Submitted by Jim Brown on June 16, 2009 - 8:18pm
As you have most likely heard by now, Twitter is the medium of choice for news about the Iran protests (even the U.S. State Department is relying on it). By using the Twitter hashtag (for the uninitiated, a hashtag is a way to sort tweets) #CNNFail, the Twittersphere has signaled its displeasure with a MSM that was not paying much attention to the events in Iran. Poor CNN ended up being the sacrificial lamb for all of traditional media.
But as I noted in a previous post about the LA Times Twitter feed, this is not necessarily about whether old or new media is winning. Instead, it seems to be a matter of Twitter users looking to traditional media channels and finding them lacking. #CNNFail was a cry for help, and the MSM seems to have finally come around. (For what it's worth, I think the complaints in the Twittersphere carried well beyond the actual negligence of the networks. At some point, people just got a kick out of echoing the indignance.)
Twitter reports and the reports of traditional news outlets now sit side by side, informing us of the daily events in Tehran and elsewhere. But whereas we have some rules in place (rules that have been around for a while) for traditional media in terms of vetting, ethics, and reliable information, no such longstanding rules exist for media like Twitter. There are rules, but they are a loose collection of "best practices."
A post over at BoingBoing entitled Cyberwar Guide for Iran Elections provides an on-the-fly set of guidelines for disseminating information about the Iran protests:
1. Do NOT publicise proxy IP's over twitter, and especially not using the #iranelection hashtag. Security forces are monitoring this hashtag, and the moment they identify a proxy IP they will block it in Iran. If you are creating new proxies for the Iranian bloggers, DM them to @stopAhmadi or @iran09 and they will distributed them discretely to bloggers in Iran.
2. Hashtags, the only two legitimate hashtags being used by bloggers in Iran are #iranelection and #gr88, other hashtag ideas run the risk of diluting the conversation.
3. Keep you bull$hit filter up! Security forces are now setting up twitter accounts to spread disinformation by posing as Iranian protesters. Please don't retweet impetuosly, try to confirm information with reliable sources before retweeting. The legitimate sources are not hard to find and follow.
4. Help cover the bloggers: change your twitter settings so that your location is TEHRAN and your time zone is GMT +3.30. Security forces are hunting for bloggers using location and timezone searches. If we all become 'Iranians' it becomes much harder to find them.
5. Don't blow their cover! If you discover a genuine source, please don't publicise their name or location on a website. These bloggers are in REAL danger. Spread the word discretely through your own networks but don't signpost them to the security forces. People are dying there, for real, please keep that in mind...
Documents like this one should show us how ad hoc much of this really is and how much the various interdisciplines of Rhetoric can bring to conversations about emerging digital constitutions. Again, there are rules. This is not necessarily a free-for-all. But it will be some time before the best practices in spaces like Twitter are cemented. That cementing process is one in which rhetoricians should be deeply involved. Digital constitutions are still being written, and our discipline is an a great position to join this writing process.
