The Use of Twitter as a Mobilization Tactic in the 2009 Iranian Election Protests

There has been increasing research on Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in the social movement field (Earl & Kimport 2008; Earl 2006; Earl & Schussman 2003; Garrett 2006; McCaughey & Ayers 2003; Van De Donk, Wim, Loader, Nixon, & Rucht 2004).  ICTs can refer to cell phones, email, weblogs (blogs), and various internet services.  Each of these tools are put in the same category of ICTs but each is different and serves different functions.  Researchers have taken into account various uses of ICT activism including petitioning, email campaigns, letter-writing campaigns, online boycotts (Earl & Kimport 2008), social networking sites such as Facebook (Rojas 2009), blogs, and forums (Kidd 2003), but there has not been ample amount of research on the micro-blogging service, Twitter.  The power of Twitter as a tool for protesters of the 2009 Iranian election has caused major mass media sources to dub the protests a “Twitter Revolution” (Berman 2009).  This paper aims to explain the emergence of the 2009 Iranian election protests and the political opportunities created by the use of Twitter as a mobilization tactic.  Since protests are ongoing, I have contained my research to the date of the announcement of the election results (June 13, 2009) to the date that Ahmadinejad was inaugurated (August 5, 2009).

Introduction

The rise of the internet has changed the range of social movements.  ICTs are able to connect local social movements to an international audience.  Scholars have noticed the significance of ICTs and how they affect social movements (Earl & Kimport 2008; Earl 2006; Earl & Schussman 2003; Garrett 2006; McCaughey & Ayers 2003; Van De Donk et al. 2004).  ICTs are changing the way social movements protest (Earl & Kimport 2008), organize (Earl & Shussman 2003), mobilize (Cardoso & Neto 2004), network (Garrido & Halavais 2003), and form identities (Ayers 2003).

ICTs affect various factors of social movements, including, mobilizing structures, opportunity structures, and the framing process.  By reducing the costs of participation, promoting a collective identity, and creating a community, ICTs are able to mobilize participants (Garrett 2006).  According to Tarrow, “Repertoires of contention, social networks, and cultural frames lower the costs of brining people into collective action, induce confidence that they are not alone, and give broader meaning to their claims” (1998: 23).  Costs of social movement participation consist of both monetary and time related costs, and physical risk.  By using ICTs, social movements are able to publish and distribute information to a large audience using little time, effort, and money (Faris & Etling 2008).  Information can snowball in a short amount of time when using ICTs, thus strengthening the impact of information distribution.  Also, ICTs allow participants to take part in a social movement without actually having to physically be at the place the social movement takes place.  Cyberspace and online anonymity contribute to lowering the physical risk when becoming involved in a social movement.  By using ICTs, social movement involvement does not have to consist of large risks or costs.

Solidarity is necessary for social movement to evoke collective action (Tarrow 1998).  One way to strengthen solidarity is by fostering a collective identity.  Participants must share common beliefs about grievances and the direction of the social movement.  ICTs are able to foster a public space where participants are not only able to digest information, but also provide feedback.  This adds an interactive component to identity shaping, and allows participants to feel more incorporated with the group, therefore, more committed to the social movement (Ayers 2003).

The use of forums of discussion not only allows participants to contribute to the collective identity of the social movement, it also allows them to form a community based organizational structure.  Forums give participants a free space to speak about their own experiences and receive feedback, creating a weak tie among the participant and the social movement as a whole.  When studying the Zapatista Movement, Garrido and Halavais discovered that the weak ties, fostered by ICTs, created a collaboration network where overlapping association provided a social network where resources were aggregated (2003).

ICTs are able to form structures that are not hierarchal and are able to create organizations based upon community collaboration, not hierarchal coordination.  The lack of a hierarchal structure gives participants more freedom when choosing to participate and how to participate.  Participants do not just follow a social movement; they collaborate with it.  This mesomobilization promotes cooperation and creates a transformative resource which is continually adapting and progressing the social movement (Garrett 2006).

The Political Process Model has been central in describing the emergence and outcomes of social movements.  This model stresses the importance of political opportunities created by increased access, shifting alignments, divided elites, influential allies, and repression and facilitation (McAdam 1982).  ICTs are able to create political opportunities by increasing access by broadening the range of the social movement.  Globalization has created a world where international influence is important.  ICTs are able to connect social movements where there is little political opportunity to their international counterparts, where there is political opportunity (Garrett 2006).

ICTs assist in the regulation of elites, thus lessening the effects of repression.  Elites are less likely to repress social movements when they know that they are being watched.  Internet “watch-dog” groups, such as watchdog.net, have been set up to continuously monitor and report elite activities.  Repression and corruption become less likely when ICTs report and spread information about  elite misconduct.

Blogs are much more likely to report about local, national, and transnational protests (Almeida & Lichbach 2003).  ICTs provide a larger arena for a social movements framing process which is not limited by the space and distribution issues intrinsic to traditional media sources (Kidd 2003).  With the use of ICTs, social movements have the ability to propagate their own frames.  ICTs allow social movements to bypass the filters of mass media, thus enhancing the control of the social movement on the framing process.

According the Vegh, online activism can be classified into various forms: 1) awareness/advocacy; 2) organization/mobilization; and 3) action/reaction (2003).  ICTs are able to promote awareness and advocacy by serving as an alternate news source.  Information is able to be distributed through the use of blogs, usenet groups, forums, and email campaigns, etc.  Awareness and advocacy commonly revolves around the actions of the social movement.  This leads to the next form of online activism: organization/mobilization.  Organization and mobilization can be used to organize both online and offline activism.  Common forms of organization and mobilization ICTs are discussion forums, cell phones, and Skype teleconferences.  Online activism can lead to a call for action, either online, or offline.  Common action/reaction online activism consists of various types of hacktivism.  Hacktivists engage in “electronic civil disobedience” (ECD).  ECD contains traditional forms of civil disobedience and transforms them to cyberspace (Wray 1999).  Common ECD tactics are blockading websites or email systems by overwhelming a target server, hijacking websites to imitation parody websites, demolishing websites through the use of internet viruses, and trespassing websites to take information (Vegh 2003).

Twitter and Online Activism

Each of these forms of online activism is accessible through the use of Twitter.  Twitter is a micro-blogging service where users are able to write 140 character messages dubbed “tweets”.  Tweets can be open access (available for anyone to see), shared among “followers” (those subscribed to the author’s Twitter feed), or sent through a restricted direct message.  The 140 character limit was set up to be compatible with “text messaging”, Short Message Services (SMS), provided by phone service providers.  Tweets can be received through the Twitter website, phone applications, or other, numerous, external applications (Jungherr 2009).

Twitter is an efficient tool for spreading advocacy and awareness.  The 140 character limit forces authors to communicate in a precise and direct manner, allowing news to hit faster.  The value of Twitter is not strictly the website service, but its ability to combine Tweets with other powerful ICTs such as YouTube, blogs, Flickr, and Facebook.  Links are effortlessly established allowing the Tweet to initiate the reader’s attention and then direct that person to further information.  Twitter is not bound to a single language; external applications such as TweeTrans and Twinslator provide instant translation tools so that Tweets can be instantly viewed by any follower, despite their language.

Tweets effortlessly snowball though the use of “re-tweeting” (RT).  This snowball effect makes Twitter an ideal mobilization tool.  The use of a RT makes spreading information as simple as clicking a button. By spreading information, Twitter can also be used as a way to organize collective action.  The use of Twitter as a way to coordinate collection action was apparent in the 2007 San Diego Wildfires.  Mass media sources were unable to provide residents with the location of the fires, so “Twitterers” (people who use Twitter) Nate Ritter (@nateritter) and Dan Tentler (@viss) tweeted real time updates to keep residents and government agencies updated on the development and rescue proceedings of the fires (Jungherr 2009).  Residence were able to gauge their actions based upon the real time, aggregated information provided by Twitter.

Twitter can be used as a tool to promote action/reaction forms of online activism.  Activism is dangerous in repressive regimes; Twitter promotes action by weakening the costs of online action by providing anonymity, a decentralized structure, and social tracking.  Twitter can be as anonymous as the Twitterer would like; Twitterers can show their exact location on Google Maps, or make their location anonymous by changing their IP address.  Twitter is also near impossible to silence, since it can be accessed from thousands of external websites and phone applications.  Twitter has also been used to react to repressive regimes.  In April 2008, an American student, James Buck (@jamesbuck) was arrested for taking place in protests in Egypt.  While being arrested, he used his phone to update his Twitter feed to “Arrested” which mobilized his friends in the United States to secure his release (Jungherr 2009).

Twitter is a valuable tool when promoting various forms of online activism.  The merit of Twitter as a mobilization tool can be seen in the epoch of the 2009 Iranian Election Protests.  Major mass media sources have even named the protests a “Twitter Revolution” (Berman 2009).  The naming of protests as a “Twitter Revolution” has caused much debate, leading to a special panel discussion held by the Center for International Media Assistance (Mottaz 2009).  In the following sections, I will examine why the 2009 Iranian election protests emerged, what was the role of Twitter in the movement’s emergence, and how Twitter was used to mobilize resources in order to answer the question: Can the 2009 Iranian election protests be described as part of a Twitter Revolution?

The Origins of the 2009 Iranian Election Protests

Revolutions are most likely to occur in repressive states with a weak infrastructure and are more likely to succeed in clientelistic regimes (Goodwin 2001).  Iranian society is repressive and has a failing infrastructure.  Furthermore, Iran has increasingly strayed from populism, giving rise to clientelism (Alamdari 1999).  These aspects, and the rise of contentious collective action of labor movements, women’s movements, minority movements, and student movements, lead to the rise of mass protests resulting from the 2009 Iranian election.

Splits among elites provided political opportunities for the election protests.  The core dispute among elites was domestic policy.  During the election debates held on June 3, 2009, presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi blamed  the current Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for “downgrading” Iran in the eyes of the world.

Iranians have been experiencing electrical and water outages outages  due to sanctions, mismanagement, and corruption (Javedanfar 2008).  The 2009 Corruption Perception Index rated Iran with a 1.8 rating on a range where zero is most corrupt and 10 is no corruption.  Iran was ranked ninth most corrupt country out of 180 (Transparency International 2009).  Although Ahmadinejad continuously blames Western forces for the countries internal problems, many Iranians actually fault the country’s leaders, focusing most of the blame on Ahmadinejad.

Ahmadinejad has been criticized on his decisions regarding the economy.  In January 2008, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei overruled Ahmadinejad’s decision to remove subsidies for the poor (Levinson 2008).  The overruling not only highlighted fractions among elites, it also displayed Ahmadinejad’s betrayal of populism.  Ahmadinejad is not a true populist.  Two-hundred forty-seven state enterprises have been privatized since Ahmadinejad took office in 2005 (Wharton 2009).  Ahmadinejad is portrayed as a populist by selling “justice shares.”  Justice shares are stock in newly privatized state companies that are given to the poor.  Although the stock is freely given to the impoverished, this stock is quickly re-bought by elites at an extraordinarily cheap price, leading to elite owned monopolies (Sustar & Sepehri 2009).

The religious populism which emerged from the 1979 Iranian Revolution has been replaced with political clientelism.  Iranian society is not held together by political parties; instead it is controlled by competing group rivalries (Alamdari 1999).  This allows elites to not be held accountable, but it fragments the elites which makes social movements difficult to contain  (Goodwin 2001).

Iranians are not only looking for a change in domestic policy, they are also calling for a change on the leadership’s approach to international bodies.  Many want a better relationship with the outside world (The Real News Network 2009).  International sanctions have lead to sharp declines in Iranian exports (Esfahani & Pesaran 2009).  Many of the educated youth of Iran believe that the economy will strengthen if Iran opens up to the West, including America.

The Iranian election protests rose due to increased contentious activity.  Since Ahmadinejad cam in power, labor movements, women’s movements, minority movements, and student movements have been on the rise (Sustar & Sepehri 2009).  The momentum of other movements increased the political opportunities of the election protestors and facilitated movement emergence.

Increased privatization and the fall of populism has invoked the reemergence of the labor movement in Iran.  In January 2004, a massacre of copper workers gave rise to increased contention activity from the labor movement.  The massacre was followed by a strike consisting of one-third of Iranian Teachers in March 2004.  The worker’s movement nationalized a workers’ committee and called for increased waged by July 16, 2005.  When the government failed to comply, the worker’s movement demonstrated its capability by staging 140 strikes in October 2005 and 120 in November 2005 (Sustar & Sepehri 2009).  The 17,000 member labor union, Syndicate of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company staged a strike in January 2006, which lead to the arrests of over 7,000 people, and 30 protesters had severe injuries (International Alliance in Support of Workers in Iran 2006).  Although the repression of the 2006 protests silenced the labor movement in the short term, it rose again during the 2009 May Day demonstrations, which mobilized 2,000 workers in Tehran (Sustar & Sepehri 2009).

Minorities have suffered longstanding oppression from the Iranian regime.  The Baha’is have been repressed since the exile of the Babi and Baha’i leaders from Iranian society in 1852 (Tavakoli-Targhi 2008).   Baha’is are the largest minority in Iranian society, but they not only provide a threat due to their numbers, they also question the legitimacy of the religious elite in Iranian society (MacEoin 1988).  The arrest of five Baha’is in Tehran on January 14, 2009 mobilized the movement leading to public statements by Iran scholars saying “We are ashamed!” of human rights abuses of the Baha’is (Iran Press Watch:96).

There has also been a rise in nationalist activity among the Kurdish population of Iran.  The Kurds were influential in overthrowing the Shah in 1979, but was silenced during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s (Sustar & Sepehri 2009).  The Kurdish minority movement has gained momentum since the 2003 establishment of Iraq’s Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) and the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK) (Gresh 2009).  The Kurds are a people whose land is divided among Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Syria.  Although the United States does not officially support PJAK, PJAK leaders visited Washington in August 2007 in search for resources.  After the murder of Kurdish activists in April 2005, an ethnic uprising formed in Iran which was silenced through the force of 100,000 soldiers (Sustar & Sepehri 2009).  PJAK has turned into a guerilla group and has continued to plague the Iranian government.

The student movement in Iran has become increasingly important in Iranian society.  Iran’s university population has exponentially increased since the  1979 Iranian revolution.  The university population has also diversified; 70% of science and engineering students in Iran are women (Masood 2006).  The student movement gained international recognition in July 1999 when a basiji raid in a Tehran University dormitory resulted in 800 destroyed dorm rooms, 200 students injured, and 4 students killed (known as the 18th of Tir Disaster).  The harsh repression forced the movement to go underground, and it has been sustained though the use of opposition Internet sites such as Gooya and Iran-Emrooz (Mashayekhi 2001).

One of the most influential movements upon the election protests was the women’s movement due to the movements’ mutual association with Mousavi’s wife, Zahra Rahnavard.  Dr. Rahnavard has become a feminist icon for Iranian women (Escobar 2009).  The Iranian Revolution lead to the introduction of discriminatory laws against women.  Reforms have been difficult to pass, due to the veto power of the Guardian Council, but the women’s movement has continued to push for social reform.  The movement gained moral resources when Iranian feminist and activist, Shirin Ebadi, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003.  In 2005, the Iranian women’s movement launched their first form of large scale collective action by staging a protest in front of Tehran University.  Despite repression, the protest mobilized 5,000 women.  The women’s movement staged a rally in March 2006 which was once again repressed, but Ebadi spoke out against police brutality in favor of the women, which gave the movement international exposure (Hoodfar & Sadeghi 2009).  Despite the lack of substantial progress, the women’s movement is continually expanding (Sustar & Sepehri 2009).

The 2009 Iranian election protests resulted from the the division of elites and the rise of contentious activities creating a wave of protest.  The election protests were able to aggregate various civic groups due to the large scope of the social movement frame: freedom.  Throughout his campaign, Mousavi called for freedom of thought, and freedom of press (Escobar 2009).  The population of Iran is extraordinarily young; 70% of Iranian population is under the age of 30 and consists of one-third of eligible voters (Jahanbegloo 2009a).  The young population has become increasingly critical of the religious establishment and have become agitated by the lack of reform in society (Mashayekhi 2001).

Reform has been the core division among elites since the Iranian Revolution.  Two main factions exist in Iranian society: those for popular sovereignty and those for authoritarian religious rule (Jahanbegloo 2009b).  After the Revolution, there was debate over the power of the clergy.  The clergy quickly consolidated their power dominating all institutions in society: religion, law, military, education, etc.  The clerics in the Council of Guardians have the ability to veto; they have continued to make use of this power by vetoing reform legislation and secular political candidates (Esposito 2005).  Repression of political thought and calls for democratization caused frustration among citizens which erupted into protests after the 2009 Iranian election.

2009 Iranian Election Protests and the State Response

The repression by elites was harsh throughout the protests.  Even before the elections, 21% of the secular websites and 11% of the reformist websites were censored (Kelly & Etling 2008). Between the day that the election results were announced and the day Ahmadinejad was inaugurated, 8 protesters were reported missing, 1017 were detained, and 78 were killed (The Guardian 2009).  Mass marches were held the day that the election results were announced and Mousavi immediately asked for the election results to be annulled.  Mousavi was supported by thousands of protestors, even the Iranian Soccer team showed their solidarity with the Reformist Candidate by wearing green during a game in Seoul.  (Timelines 2009).

Although early repression was harsh, the death of protestors rallied the opposition leading to a protest with over 100,000 people in Tehran for a “day of mourning” on June 18, 2009.  This protest gave rise to a counter-movement  which rallied against the protestors for causing civil unrest.  A counter-rally was held by Ahmadinejad’s supporters at the home of former president, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, whose family had been seen supporting the protests (BBC News 2009a).

Increased national and international support for the protests lead to an escalation of violence.  On November 19, 2009, Ayatollah Khamenei declared that the vote was valid and that opposition leaders and protestors “would be responsible for bloodshed and chaos” if the protests continued (Fathi 2009).  Repression became extraordinarily harsh after the highly visible death of a young Iranian woman, Neda Soltani.  Her death ignited the passion of the opposition and authorities reacted by ensuing with indiscriminate violence and massive detentions. Divisions among elites widened when daughter and five other family members of Rafangani, who is a former president, a current leader of the Assembly of Experts, and an influential cleric, were detained (Nasseri & Meyer 2009).

On June 21, 2009, Foreign ministry spokesman Hassan Qashqavi blamed Western governments for instigating the protests.  The government was able to silence he protest movement after blaming Western influences, killing ten protestors, and detaining 457 protestors (BBC News 2009b).  Although Khomeini declared that the election was legitimate, on June 25, Mousavi reified his declaration that the votes were rigged and that peaceful protests should continue (BBC News 2009c).

On June 29, the Guardian Council certified the election results and declared Ahmadinejad the winner (Slackman 2009).  Turmoil was once again blamed on Western intervention (CNN 2009a).  On July 5, the United Student Front announced that it would hold demonstrations on the Anniversary of the 18 Tir Massacre, July 9 (Rise of the Iranian People 2009).  On July 9, 1999, a student uprising against the closing of the reformist newspaper, Salaam, lead to six days of protests with over 25,000 participants.  The protests on July 9, 2009, drew upon the momentum brought by the tenth anniversary.  It was reported that there was around 3,000 protestors, despite the large presence of Iranian police and the use of batons and tear gas (CNN 2009b).

Protestors continued to be repressed but elites started to voice their support for the protestors.  Rasanjani called for the release of protestors during Friday Prayers (CNN 2009c).  Also, the head of Iran’s judiciary, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahrudi, called for the protestors to be freed (BBC 2009d).  But despite the gained momentum of the movement due to the division of elites, repression continued to contain the protests.  On July 30, the last day of the forty day mourning period of Neda Soltan, police violently repressed the mourning ceremony (Worth & Fathi 2009).  Harsh repression continued in order to contain the movement before Ahmadinijad’s inauguration on August 5, 2009.

Twitter and Resource Mobilization

Despite severe repression, the social movement was able to sustain itself.  According to Ronald Franscisco “Massacres appear to strengthen dissident leadership and mobilization.  Organizing a dissident movement is much easier after a massacre” (2005:78).  But in order to maintain the movement, a strong organizational network must already be put in place (Osa 2003).  I believe that Twitter was able to help maintain resource mobilization due to its decentralized infrastructure and anonymity capabilities.

Figure 1 shows that Twitter remained a constant force throughout the protests.  Data was gathered using the website Trendrr.  The graph shows the difference in the value of Tweets tagged “#iranelection” and the value of Google hits tagged “iran election” over time.  Where as Google hits quickly dissipated, tweets remained fairly consistent.  Tweets and blogs decreased in activity after the first wave of harsh repression and the first claim of Western intervention on June 21.  After the first drop in activity, Twitter remained fairly consistent, where as blogs decreased after the second call of Western intervention on June 29 and again after the severe repression to avoid protests on the tenth anniversary of the 18 Tir massacre.  Twitter was able to maintain contentious online chatter because micro-blogging takes much less time and attention than blogging, so it is much easier to maintain.  Also, Twitter is much more difficult to block than blogs due to Twitter’s decentralized infrastructure.

Twitter became a valuable mobilization tool because it was able to maintain contention despite the use of repression.  The protests were able to sustain mobilization because of the increasing cultural resources available to Iranians through their use of the internet as a mobilization tool.  Iran supports one of the largest online communities in the world amounting to approximately 60,000 active blogs.  Although online discourse is diverse, secular/reformist blogs are larger in number and share more resources than religious/conservative blogs (Kelly & Etling 2008).

Social movements are able to build off other movements tactical and cultural repertoires (Whittier 2004).  Iranian social movements have been using the internet as a mobilization tactic.  Iranian students have used opposition Internet sites to mobilize an opposition network (Mashayekhi 2001).  Iranian Kurdish nationalists have made use of the internet as a communication tool  to link transnational networks (Gresh 2009).  Iranian woman have made use of internet tactics to mobilize global networks and avoid government censorship (Hoodfar & Sadeghi 2009).  The internet has been used to maintain ties with the Iranian Diaspora, which has been mobilized to assist Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) such as the Society for Protecting the Rights of the Child, and International Woman’s Day (Ghorashi & Boersma 2009).  Despite the high level of online repression, Iranians have learned how to adapt their tactics and bypass internet censors (Shirazi 2008).

Iranians were able to make use of their technological suave and used Twitter to mobilize resources that would help bypass state regulation.  Twitter was used to quickly spread information and recruit hacktivists (Moscaritolo 2009).  Tweets posted linked to websites that assist the protestors by reporting missing persons, giving protest advice, planning protests, and giving advice on how to keep online anonymity and bypass internet censorship.  Anonymous Iran, a 4chan inspired group of hacktivists, teamed with Pirate Bay in order to organize advice about making your own proxy  to maintain anonymity and how to preform DDoS attacks (Anonymous Iran 2009).

Through the use of Twitter, the election protestors were able to mobilize organizational resources, quickly and cheaply.  The protestors made use of the Iranian diaspora and their ability to distribute information without state regulation.  Due to Twitter’s ability to translate information quickly, information was able to be sent globally with little effort.  Information was able to go viral through the use of re-tweeting (RT).  By pushing the RT button, information is spread to all of the tweeter’s followers, who can also distribute information by pushing a single button.

Twitter was a tool used to both organize information and distribute it to an international audience.  Videos and pictures of harsh repression were linked to Twitter and showcased the brutality of the Iranian regime.  This was able to help the movement gain valuable moral resources, including former presidents, influential clerics, and judges.

Twitter was used to mobilize human resources by widening the range of the movement and decreasing risk due to anonymity.  Due to the globalized aspects of Twitter, the local movement received support from an international audience.  Internationals organized and protested the Iran election by protesting in front of Iranian Embassies in London, the Netherlands, and Paris (Azpiri 2009).    Twitter was also used as an organizational tool to assist protestors on how to protect their anonymity.  Tweeters posted information and provided support on maintaining anonymity and many helped protesters link to websites that provide anonymity services, such as the Tor Project.  Tor Project provided Iranian users a way to maintain their anonymity; the number of bridge users jumped 1,200% from June 13 to June 23 (Lewman 2009).  Twitter facilitated human resource mobilization by providing a way for more people to become involved, despite their geographical location and by creating a free space that was not controlled by the state media.

Twitter was a valuable tool used to mobilize resources though out the 2009 Iranian election protests.  Networks are important when organizing against repressive regimes (Osa 2003).  Twitter was an important tactic because it provided the protestors a constant, international network whose decentralized structure made silencing near impossible.  The Twitter network diffused information, aggregated resources, decreased risks, strengthened collective identity and created a public sphere.

Conclusion

Twitter was an effective tool in mobilizing resources through out the 2009 Iranian elections, but there are problems with the use of Twitter as a mobilization tool.  The benefits of online anonymity and open access are a part of a double edge sword.  Government officials made use of online anonymity by setting up fake Twitter accounts and spreading misinformation (Twitspam 2009).  Also, government officials were able to track protests by viewing any information that Tweeters made open access.  Twitter can be a powerful force for both elite and opposition parties. But due to the experience and adaptability of the Iranian election protesters, Twitter became a valuable asset rather than a detriment for the social movement.

This paper has only explained the use of Twitter in social movement emergence.  Research needs to be expanded to also describe the influence Twitter has on social movement outcomes.  Networks facilitate success for social movements in repressive regimes (Osa 2003).  Tweets regarding the election protests are still occurring to this day (Twitter 2009).  Twitter has proved to be a consistent mobilization network and social movement research needs to look into this phenomenon.

Although Twitter was an effective tool in the 2009 Iranian Election protests, the protests cannot be described as a “Twitter Revolution.”  The protests were more effective through the use of Twitter as a mobilization tactic but the root of the protests are deep within society and effect thousands of Iranians who do not have internet access.  By reducing the protests to a “Twitter Revolution,” you minimize the range of the social movement.  Technology, media, and new modes of association have always played an important role in facilitating protests (Tarrow 1998), but the movements cannot be reduced to their tactics.  The protestors made use of the technology around them, but the roots of the protests go much deeper into Iranian society.  Twitter was a valuable tool, but the protests must be described by its goals and the cultural rift in Iranian society.  The protests were about freedom and democracy, not about Twitter.

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