Agitprop Abounds, Too Many People Are Buying It
This imbroglio in Iran is showing us something very important. There's a danger in thinking we should rely on instant messaging to feel that we're in tune, up to the minute, plugged in, whatever. Twitter seems to be the Big Thing these days. I myself hate the thought of having to want to know when someone has to go take a dump but if that's what makes someone feel relevant, have fun.
But news agencies are starting to rely on personal networking, a sorry development that shouldn't be unexpected because of their ugly history of lazy journalism. After all, it's an easy leap from stenographers with amnesia at press briefings to gullible suckers of supposed breaking news, especially if you don't have to really do anything. Plus the temptation and pressure to be the first one on a possibly hot story must be intense.
As the hours go by with Iran it's instructive to see who's paying attention and who isn't, and to find out who seems to be consciously part of propaganda dissemination. Here's AP being somewhat candid:
"Some media such as The Associated Press and others often monitor sites such as Twitter, looking for news tips and to assess the general mood."
Some left wing sites, like Buzzflash and HuffingtonPost, are all atwitter over what appears to be a revolution by rumor against government abuse and corruption in Iran after the election there, according to supposedly on-the-scene livebloggers. Buzzflash gushes:
"This is an historical turning point in journalism. Hundreds of users Twitter on this subject every minute and release news of deaths, rallies, protests, and everything in between."
Whether or not there were real improprieties during the election doesn't concern me. After all Iran's process is inherently flawed since all candidates have to swear allegiance to a theocratic system and are vetted by the mullahs, limiting candidates to a small hand picked bunch of religious men only. It seems very unlikely that fraud on a widespread scale could have happened there since they have thousands of vote watchers counting the votes by hand unlike high tech thievery behind closed doors here in the US. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was way in front in pre election polls and won by almost exactly the same percentage as he won in 2004. There's no hard evidence of vote rigging. The protests and demonstrations are happening, though probably not on the scale we're told, so who would profit by hijacking Twitter et al to throw gasoline on a fire?
The usual suspects.
Proof: Israeli Effort to Destabilize Iran Via Twitter
"Right-wing Israeli interests are engaged in an all out Twitter attack with hopes of delegitimizing the Iranian election and causing political instability within Iran.
Anyone using Twitter over the past few days knows that the topic of the Iranian election has been the most popular. Thousands of tweets and retweets alleging that the election was a fraud, calling for protests in Iran, and even urging followers hack various Iranian news websites (which they did successfully). The Twitter popularity caught the eye of various blogs such as Mashable and TechCrunch and even made its way to mainstream news media sites.
Were these legitimate Iranian people or the works of a propaganda machine? I became curious and decided to investigate the origins of the information. In doing so, I narrowed it down to a handful of people who have accounted for 30,000 Iran related tweets in the past few days. Each of them had some striking similarities -
1. They each created their twitter accounts on Saturday June 13th.
2. Each had extremely high number of Tweets since creating their profiles.
3. “IranElection” was each of their most popular keyword
4. With some very small exceptions, each were posting in ENGLISH.
5. Half of them had the exact same profile photo6. Each had thousands of followers, with only a few friends. Most of their friends were EACH OTHER."
Meet the spammers.
added - Are you ready for war with demonized Iran?
But news agencies are starting to rely on personal networking, a sorry development that shouldn't be unexpected because of their ugly history of lazy journalism. After all, it's an easy leap from stenographers with amnesia at press briefings to gullible suckers of supposed breaking news, especially if you don't have to really do anything. Plus the temptation and pressure to be the first one on a possibly hot story must be intense.
As the hours go by with Iran it's instructive to see who's paying attention and who isn't, and to find out who seems to be consciously part of propaganda dissemination. Here's AP being somewhat candid:
"Some media such as The Associated Press and others often monitor sites such as Twitter, looking for news tips and to assess the general mood."
Some left wing sites, like Buzzflash and HuffingtonPost, are all atwitter over what appears to be a revolution by rumor against government abuse and corruption in Iran after the election there, according to supposedly on-the-scene livebloggers. Buzzflash gushes:
"This is an historical turning point in journalism. Hundreds of users Twitter on this subject every minute and release news of deaths, rallies, protests, and everything in between."
Whether or not there were real improprieties during the election doesn't concern me. After all Iran's process is inherently flawed since all candidates have to swear allegiance to a theocratic system and are vetted by the mullahs, limiting candidates to a small hand picked bunch of religious men only. It seems very unlikely that fraud on a widespread scale could have happened there since they have thousands of vote watchers counting the votes by hand unlike high tech thievery behind closed doors here in the US. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was way in front in pre election polls and won by almost exactly the same percentage as he won in 2004. There's no hard evidence of vote rigging. The protests and demonstrations are happening, though probably not on the scale we're told, so who would profit by hijacking Twitter et al to throw gasoline on a fire?
The usual suspects.
Proof: Israeli Effort to Destabilize Iran Via Twitter
"Right-wing Israeli interests are engaged in an all out Twitter attack with hopes of delegitimizing the Iranian election and causing political instability within Iran.
Anyone using Twitter over the past few days knows that the topic of the Iranian election has been the most popular. Thousands of tweets and retweets alleging that the election was a fraud, calling for protests in Iran, and even urging followers hack various Iranian news websites (which they did successfully). The Twitter popularity caught the eye of various blogs such as Mashable and TechCrunch and even made its way to mainstream news media sites.
Were these legitimate Iranian people or the works of a propaganda machine? I became curious and decided to investigate the origins of the information. In doing so, I narrowed it down to a handful of people who have accounted for 30,000 Iran related tweets in the past few days. Each of them had some striking similarities -
1. They each created their twitter accounts on Saturday June 13th.
2. Each had extremely high number of Tweets since creating their profiles.
3. “IranElection” was each of their most popular keyword
4. With some very small exceptions, each were posting in ENGLISH.
5. Half of them had the exact same profile photo6. Each had thousands of followers, with only a few friends. Most of their friends were EACH OTHER."
Meet the spammers.
added - Are you ready for war with demonized Iran?
posted by nolocontendere at 5:35 PM
3 Comments:
Even antiwar.com seems to be caught up in the propaganda on this subject, though Justin Raimondo did a fairly well-balanced article Monday that emphasized a "noninterventionist" position and that Iran's election is "none of our business" in the states.
But today, they have one of those swell protestors with holding up a sign, in english. We all know how desperate antiwar.com is for money. My guess is that AIPAC may have been a large contributor this year.
AIPAC supporting Antiwar? Whoa, THAT would tear a hole in the matrix!
I just went over and read Raimondo's piece and I just can't understand how people won't believe that Ahmadinejad has wide support. From all I gather Iranians aren't enthralled yet the rank and file believe he's situated to negotiate the best deals for them, that and his slightly populist policies are being ignored in everybody's rush to embrace the manufactured rebellion.
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