The post-election media crackdown in Iran.
Anger over a perceived unrealistically large win by incumbent President Ahmadinejad in the 2009 presidential elections led to numerous street demonstrations in the days following. The government responded with a crackdown on all forms of media and communication.
In addition to the government’s usual censorship of many websites, it has been claimed that the government significantly limited the amount of Internet traffic out of the country by slowing speeds by over 50% within hours of the election.
The targeting of illegal satellite dishes – potentially used for both receiving DTH TV and also for Internet connections – was stepped up.
Western media were banned and such radio services such as BBC Persian blocked. Middle East regional media were also targeted by the government, such as the Dubai-based news channel Al-Arabiya, which was ordered to close its Tehran bureau for a week for ‘unfair reporting’ of the election.
Despite these obstacles, protestors famously managed to communicate amongst themselves and with the rest of the world via sites such as Facebook and Twitter and also to distribute videos via YouTube, working with proxy sites and satellite links. For some time at the beginning of the protests, these ‘new media’ sites were considerably better sources of information for the world than ‘old media’ sites such as CNN.
In an effort to increase access to information by Persian speakers, Google announced that it had added Persian language support to its translations service, initially only supporting translation between English and Persian but with other languages planned. Facebook also launched a beta version in Persian.
There were reports that mobile services were also blocked, including reports in South Africa that MTN would consequently lose up to a month’s revenue from its Iranian operations, but MTN denied these reports.
For more information see:
Iran – Telecoms, Mobile & Broadband.
Tagged in: Iran, The Middle East
