PEACEW RKS

BLOGS AND BULLETS

new media in contentious politics

Sean Aday

Henry Farrell

Marc Lynch

John Sides

George Washington University

John Kelly

Morningside Analytics

Ethan Zuckerman

Berkman Center for Internet and Society

[ [

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Cover photos: iStock.

The views expressed in this report are 

those of the authors alone. They do 

not necessarily reflect views of the 

United States Institute of Peace.

United States Institute of Peace

1200 17th Street NW, Suite 200

Washington, DC 20036-3011

Phone: 202.457.1700

Fax: 202.429.6063

E-mail: usip_requests@usip.org

Web: www.usip.org

Peaceworks No. 65. First published 

2010.

© 2010 by the United States Institute 

of Peace About the Repo

r

In this report from the United States Institute of 

Peace’s Centers of Innovation for Science, Technol-

ogy, and Peacebuilding, and Media, Conflict, and 

Peacebuilding, a team of scholars from The George 

Washington University, in cooperation with scholars 

from Harvard University and Morningside Analytics, 

critically assesses both the “cyberutopian” and 

“cyberskeptic” perspectives on the impact of new 

media on political movements. The authors propose a 

more complex approach that looks at the role of new 

media in contentious politics from five interlocking 

levels of analysis: individual transformation, intergroup 

relations, collective action, regime policies, and external attention. The authors are particularly indebted 

to Sheldon Himelfarb of the Centers of Innovation 

for his support and contributions to this project. The 

authors would also like to thank research assistants 

Brett Borrowman, Juliet Guaglianone, Chris Mitchell, 

and Rachel Whitlark. About the Autho

s

Sean Aday is an associate professor of media and 

public affairs and international affairs at The George 

Washington University, and director of the Institute 

for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication. 

Henry Farrell is an associate professor of political 

science at The George Washington University. Marc 

Lynch is an associate professor of political science 

and international affairs at The George Washington 

University and director of the Institute for Middle 

East Studies. John Sides is an assistant professor 

of political science at The George Washington Uni-

versity. John Kelly is the founder and lead scientist 

at Morningside Analytics and an affiliate of the 

Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard 

University. Ethan Zuckerman is senior researcher 

at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at 

Harvard University and also part of the team building 

Global Voices, a group of international bloggers 

bridging cultural and linguistic differences through 

weblogs. 

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Summary ... 3

Introduction ... 5

Improving the Analysis of New Media and Contentious Politics ... 6

The Political Effects of New Media: Five Levels of Analysis ... 9

Illustrating the Approach: Iran ... 13

Conclusions and Further Directions ... 26

Notes ... 28

[ If new media change the politics of unrest, 

revolution, violence, and civil war, then 

governments and civil society need to 

understand how, so as to better respond 

to events as they are happening. ]

Peaceworks • August 2010 • no. 6

CONTENTS

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Summary

■ New media, such as blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, have played a major role in 

episodes of contentious political action. They are often described as important tools for 

activists seeking to replace authoritarian regimes and to promote freedom and democracy, 

and they have been lauded for their democratizing potential. 

■ Despite the prominence of “Twitter revolutions,” “color revolutions,” and the like in 

public debate, policymakers and scholars know very little about whether and how new 

media affect contentious politics. Journalistic accounts are inevitably based on anecdotes 

rather than rigorously designed research. 

■ Although data on new media have been sketchy, new tools are emerging that measure 

linkage patterns and content as well as track memes across media outlets and thus might 

offer fresh insights into new media.

■ The impact of new media can be better understood through a framework that considers 

five levels of analysis: individual transformation, intergroup relations, collective action, 

regime policies, and external attention. New media have the potential to change how citizens think or act, mitigate or exacerbate group conflict, facilitate collective action, spur a 

backlash among regimes, and garner international attention toward a given country.

■ Evidence from the protests after the Iranian presidential election in June 2009 suggests 

the utility of examining the role of new media at each of these five levels.

■ Although there is reason to believe the Iranian case exposes the potential benefits of new 

media, other evidence—such as the Iranian regime’s use of the same social network tools 

to harass, identify, and imprison protesters—suggests that, like any media, the Internet 

is not a “magic bullet.” At best, it may be a “rusty bullet.” Indeed, it is plausible that 

traditional media sources were equally if not more important.

■ Scholars and policymakers should adopt a more nuanced view of new media’s role in 

democratization and social change, one that recognizes that new media can have both 

positive and negative effects. 

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Introduction

In January 2010, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton articulated a powerful vision of the 

Internet as promoting freedom and global political transformation and rewriting the rules 

of political engagement and action. Her vision resembles that of others who argue that new 

media technologies facilitate participatory politics and mass mobilization, help promote democracy and free markets, and create new kinds of global citizens. Some observers have even 

suggested that Twitter’s creators should receive the Nobel Peace Prize for their role in the 2009 

Iranian protests.1 But not everyone has such sanguine views. Clinton herself was careful to 

note when sharing her vision that new media were not an “unmitigated blessing.” Pessimists 

argue that these technologies may actually exacerbate conflict, as exemplified in Kenya, the 

Czech Republic, and Uganda, and help authoritarian regimes monitor and police their citizens.2

 They argue that new media encourage self-segregation and polarization as people seek 

out only information that reinforces their prior beliefs, offering ever more opportunities for the 

spread of hate, misinformation, and prejudice.3 Some skeptics question whether new media 

have significant effects at all. Perhaps they are simply a tool used by those who would protest 

in any event or a trendy “hook” for those seeking to tell political stories. Do new media have 

real consequences for contentious politics—and in which direction?4

The sobering answer is that, fundamentally, no one knows. To this point, little research has 

sought to estimate the causal effects of new media in a methodologically rigorous fashion, or to 

gather the rich data needed to establish causal influence. Without rigorous research designs or 

rich data, partisans of all viewpoints turn to anecdotal evidence and intuition. It seems improbable that such a massive change in political communication would not matter, even if the data 

to demonstrate the effects are lacking and older forms of political communication and mass 

media continue to shape political outcomes. Former British prime minister Gordon Brown 

has suggested that new media can actually prevent genocide: “You cannot have Rwanda again 

because information would come out far more quickly about what is actually going on and the 

public opinion would grow to the point where action would need to be taken.” Perhaps, but 

Michael Jackson’s death drove discussion of Uighur protests against the Chinese government 

off Twitter,5

 and new media have paid little attention to ongoing strife in the Congo. Even 

coverage of the devastating 2010 earthquake in Haiti had real problems. The earthquake was 

a top-trending topic on Twitter, which allowed millions to get information, and even to put 

pressure on the U.S. Air Force to allow relief flights into the Port-au-Prince airport. However, 

mainstream media outlets may have benefited more from Twitter than ordinary citizens.6

The answers to these questions have important consequences for politics and policy. The 

Internet could be a powerful force for political freedom. To harness its power, Secretary Clinton 

has argued, the United States must “put these tools in the hands of people around the world 

who will use them to advance democracy and human rights, fight climate change and epidemics, build global support for President Obama’s goal of a world without nuclear weapons, and 

encourage sustainable economic development.” Similarly, a growing number of analysts argue 

that supporting Internet freedom is crucial to bringing about regime change in Iran, as access 

to information and the freedom to connect will empower the Green Movement against the 

current regime.7

But these assumptions, however plausible, remain largely untested. Will a freer Internet 

empower the Green Movement in Iran or will it simply allow the incumbent regime to dominate a new terrain? To make good policy, policymakers and advocates need to understand not 

only who is winning and who is losing, but why one side is winning or losing. This requires 

Without rigorous research 

designs or rich data, 

partisans of all viewpoints 

turn to anecdotal 

evidence and intuition.

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much more systematic thinking about the relationship between new media and politics. If new 

media change the politics of unrest, revolution, violence, and civil war, then governments and 

civil society need to understand how, so as to better respond to events as they are happening. 

If certain patterns of communication are associated with a greater likelihood of violence, then 

these patterns must be identified as far in advance as possible. If greater access to information 

technology makes violence less likely, then technology policy must be integrated into the standard toolkits for conflict prevention and democracy promotion.

This report casts a critical eye on the conventional wisdom about the effects of new media 

on contentious politics. But it goes beyond skepticism to identify how our understanding of 

these complex relationships could be improved and how this knowledge could be applied to 

major policy issues. The report delineates five distinct levels of analysis at which new media may 

plausibly affect politics and proposes research questions and hypotheses in each area: individual 

transformation, intergroup relations, collective action, regime policies, and external attention.

This report, like the body of work it criticizes, largely draws on the fragmentary evidence and 

anecdotes that are available. But it also points to new methodologies and technologies that 

could allow for progress. Ultimately, this report will serve as a guide for policymakers and advocates seeking to use new media to advance their goals.8

Improving the Analysis of New Media and Contentious Politics

The shaky methodological foundations of the understanding of the relationship between new 

media and contentious politics are a problem for policymakers and activists as well as social 

scientists. Acting effectively in the world requires getting the causal relationships right. Research design matters. Many claims currently made about the effects of new media are blind 

to hidden variables, confuse output with impact, or assume causal relationships that may be 

spurious. The first step must therefore be to get the research design right. The lack of data, a 

problem that is addressed later in this report, can be overcome (i.e., through better processing 

of online information in multiple languages), but data will only help if used in the right ways, 

with careful attention to which questions they can help answer. 

Research Design

Journalistic accounts usually prefer good stories to complex arguments—and, in particular, 

heroic accounts of scrappy activists to serious examination of how new media affect political 

action. Here are some guidelines for thinking more rigorously about such effects:

■ Case selection. The effects of new media cannot be understood by focusing only on their 

apparent successes. Equally important are cases where new media had no effect or even 

had a detrimental effect. For example, blogs and Facebook were credited for sparking 

activism in Egypt but generated much less protest in other Arab countries facing similar 

political and social problems. To understand the impact (if any) of blogs and Facebook, 

both successes and failures must be understood.

■ Counterfactuals. Similarly, policymakers, activists, journalists, and scholars must ask 

whether episodes of contentious politics would have emerged without new media. For 

example, in 2005, Egypt’s elections, as well as American pressure to liberalize, might 

have created openings for protest with or without blogs and Facebook. The Revolutionary 

Armed Forces of Columbia’s (FARC) unpopularity in Columbia might have sparked a 

popular backlash even without organizing on Facebook. In Iran, the outcome of the 2009 

The report delineates

five distinct levels of 

analysis . . . individual 

transformation, 

intergroup relations, 

collective action, regime 

policies, and external 

attention.

To understand the impact 

(if any) of blogs and 

Facebook, both successes 

and failures must be 

understood.

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BLOGS AND BULLETS

presidential election might well have triggered similar protests had Twitter never existed. 

In other words, new media might play an intermediary role but be neither necessary nor 

sufficient for contentious politics. 

■ Hidden variables. Focusing on new media may divert analysts from the real causes. A 

battle between elite actors (say, between the military and business interests) may be the 

real drivers of a political conflict, even if they are only dimly perceived through the lens 

of new media. Protest activity may derive from economic hardship, local conflicts, or a 

political event (such as an election or leadership transition) rather than by the new media. 

In Kuwait, for instance, the death of the emir and transition to a new leader created an 

opening for political debate for bloggers who had previously been largely apolitical. 

■ Causal mechanisms. Political scientists frustrated with indeterminate macronarratives 

have increasingly turned to testing more precise causal mechanisms—small steps within 

a larger analytical narrative that may be more amenable to testing. It may be impossible 

to determine whether Internet access leads to democracy, but it may be possible to test 

whether access to the Internet increases individual propensity to take risky political action 

or lowers the transaction costs for organizing a political protest. This could also be useful 

for policy, since research focused on causal mechanisms can better predict the likely 

effects of manipulating a single variable (such as increasing the freedom of information 

available to Iranians, or making a concerted effort to change the distribution of opinions 

within the Iraqi blogosphere). It does carry the risk of missing out on system effects.

■ System effects. Changes at one level of analysis, as described below, may be mutually 

reinforcing, but they may also work at cross-purposes with changes at another. An effective research design often needs to consider the interaction among different variables, 

rather than highlight a single change in isolation. For instance, new media may lower 

transaction costs for organizing protests, which would presumably make contentious 

politics more likely, but may also lead to greater elite awareness of and responsiveness to 

public complaints, thereby preempting protests. Or growing access to new media may 

improve the economy and create opportunities that take people away from politics even 

as the costs of such organizing go down. 

■ New media outlet selection. Focusing only on sympathetic actors within a broader political milieu, or on a limited set of new media sources, can produce highly misleading conclusions. A study that assumes, for instance, that new media will favor liberal actors may 

ignore how they also empower illiberal actors. A study of English-language blogs may 

miss important and different online political dynamics in other national languages. Seeing 

the bigger picture—which includes the political impact of actors who are not online—and 

capturing the full spectrum of online participants will make for more robust analysis. 

■ Strategic interaction. Many accounts focus on the citizen protesters and ignore rivals as 

they take countermeasures. States can respond to the perceived success of activism and 

prevent its replication. They can also use and regulate new media to serve their own ends 

and undercut challenges to their authority and reputation.9 Few incumbents want to 

endure their own “Twitter revolutions,” and thus Chinese authorities acted quickly to 

shut down Short Message Service (SMS) and the Internet when the Uighur protests in 

Xinjiang began in 2009. In the most disturbing manifestation of countermeasures, 

authoritarian regimes use new media to locate, target, and arrest dissidents, as when the 

Iranians circulated pictures of protesters for loyal members of the public to identify.10

Competing political movements will also adopt effective new technologies, erasing the 

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short-term advantages that might be gained from the early adoption of new media 

platforms. 

Data 

The second problem with examinations of new media in contested politics is sparse data. 

Conclusions are generally drawn from potentially nonrepresentative anecdotes and/or laborious hand coding of a subset of easily identified major (usually English-language) media. At 

the same time, there is progress in developing viable techniques to collect and analyze vast 

amounts of data from the Internet. Ideally, these techniques will capture the flow of information and communications in real time, while also reaching back far enough to establish 

baseline conditions from which significant deviations stand out. They must also identify and 

trace a sufficiently representative selection of new media. Conflict is inevitably Rashomon-like: 

different people will experience and interpret the same events in different ways. Focusing on 

a handful of news outlets—or a network of personal contacts within the country—could bias 

any observer’s understanding. Finally, they must work in multiple languages, not only English. 

Two technological changes make it possible to survey a wide array of traditional and new 

media, to acquire a large amount of information in real time, and to measure its content rapidly 

and accurately. The first change is the widespread adoption of syndication formats, including 

RSS and Atom. Syndication allows a software program to “subscribe” to a URL and be alerted 

when new content is posted to that URL. Aggregators designed for research purposes can subscribe to thousands of feeds, retrieving every story posted to a weblog or newspaper Web site, 

a process that is far more efficient and accurate than previous spidering-based approaches to 

data collection. The second change is that tools that allow the automatic analysis of content are 

becoming more widespread, powerful, and affordable. Tools such as OpenCalais from Reuters 

now offer these capabilities via Web services, allowing researchers to classify fifty thousand 

documents per day for free. Several new approaches draw on these technological changes:

■ Link analysis. The networks that exist among Web-based media that habitually interlink, such as blogs and many traditional media outlets, can be mapped. One way to do 

this is to analyze linkage patterns, as Morningside Analytics did with data used in this 

study. Networks are increasingly recognized as important motivators not only of social 

phenomena but also of politically consequential behaviors. For instance, terrorist recruitment often draws on preexisting networks of friends and acquaintances. By mapping 

networks of new media, analysts can determine who is talking to whom, identify key 

nodes or hubs that link many other media sources, and identify apparent patterns of 

affinity or antagonism. Pairing network analysis with basic content analysis allows analysts to identify the central identity of different media sources and of the networks in 

which they exist. A study of the American political blogosphere demonstrated a pattern 

of partisan clustering that may suggest a polarizing effect for new media.11

■ Content analysis. The specific content that is published or discussed in new media and 

how this content spreads across networks can be measured. An example of a contentanalytic tool is the Berkman Center’s Media Cloud project, which this study also 

employs. It is an open-source software package that monitors a large array of digital 

media, processes massive amounts of text, and identifies and displays patterns. 

Specifically, it subscribes to tens of thousands of RSS or Atom feeds, collecting newly 

published stories shortly after publication and indexing them for analysis and retrieval. 

Networks are increasingly 

recognized as important 

motivators not only 

of social phenomena 

but also of politically 

consequential behaviors.

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Media Cloud tracks the appearance of a word or phrase across media sources and across 

time, as well as words that commonly appear in conjunction with the search term. Media 

Cloud can compare patterns of appearance and conjunction across sources and also 

retrieve the text or Web page of any story, allowing more detailed and careful analysis. 

The existing system also offers simple graphic visualization of these results. 

■ Meme tracking. Identifying the flow of specific concepts, terms, or issues through new 

media can help establish causality. Richard Dawkins coined the term “meme” to describe 

ideas or other discrete cultural forms that can spread from individual to individual, perhaps changing as they do, in processes that are loosely analogous to genetic evolution. As 

Jon Kleinberg and his colleagues argue, sophisticated means of data analysis can be used 

to track how individual phrases (which are the closest equivalent to memes that can be 

analyzed on the Internet) are transmitted across electronic networks, changing and 

mutating as they do. Meme tracking can answer the question of whether ideas move from 

the blogosphere to the mainstream media or vice versa, or whether they originate with 

one sector of political society rather than another. For example, Jure Leskovec, Lars 

Backstrom, and Jon Kleinberg have shown that prominent political memes typically 

spread from mainstream media to blogs, rather than vice versa, with characteristic patterns of spikes in the intensity of discussion.12 Tracking can also, within limits, help us 

understand how memes change as they move across communities.

This report presents brief examples of how such methodologies might be applied to cases 

of political contention, and concludes by fleshing out an appeal for innovative research to offer 

new applications and solutions to these data problems. 

The Political Effects of New Media: Five Levels of Analysis

Determining how new media might affect contentious politics requires unpacking this concept. 

This report argues that there are five distinct levels at which new media can matter: individual 

transformation, intergroup relations, collective action, regime policies, and external attention. 

These levels capture distinct pathways by which change might be manifest and measured. The 

relationship among the different levels may be mutually reinforcing, as changes in individual 

attitudes align with changes in the possibilities for collective action and the nature of external 

attention. But they may also be nonlinear: change at the individual level, for instance, may push 

in a different direction than do the dynamics of external attention. 

Individual Transformation

New media may affect contentious politics via their effect on individuals who either participate in or are exposed to such communication flows. Some individuals may develop 

new competencies through their exposure to or participation in new media, allowing them to 

participate more readily or effectively in real-world politics or to process information differently.13 For example, women may find it more possible to engage in a mediated public 

sphere than in real-world contentious politics, giving them the sorts of experience with 

public political engagement that in the past would have been denied them.14 Alternatively, 

new media could make citizens more passive, by leading them to confuse online rhetoric 

with substantial political action, diverting their attention away from productive activities.15

New media may also alter or reinforce political attitudes. For example, exposure to jihadist Internet sites may play a role in radicalization, just as exposure to liberal or objective 

Sophisticated means 

of data analysis can 

be used to track how 

individual phrases . . . 

are transmitted across 

electronic networks, 

changing and mutating as 

they do. 

Alternatively, new media 

could make citizens 

more passive, by leading 

them to confuse online 

rhetoric with substantial 

political action.

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Internet sites may convince a radical Islamist that violence should not be considered legitimate.16 Plausible questions for further research include: 

■ Does participation in or exposure to new media lead to new political competencies?

■ Does it change political attitudes, orientations, or identities?

■ Does it intensify political attitudes, orientations, or identities (i.e., radicalization)?

■ Does it produce a more active or passive approach to political action (i.e., reducing or 

increasing propensity to engage in off-line political activity)? 

Such questions could be examined through instruments that assess individual attitudes, 

expectations, or beliefs, such as experiments, survey research, focus groups, and structured 

interviews. 

Intergroup Relations

New media may reshape discussions and debates within and across groups in a society, changing intergroup relationships and attitudes. Optimists see the Internet as generating positive 

connections, spreading information, and proliferating points of contact across political, sectarian, or geographic divides. Pessimists, such as Cass Sunstein, fear its ability to polarize, as 

people seek out congenial relationships and bias-confirming information.17 Which is right? 

Do new media tend to “bond” group members to one another, or do they “bridge” members 

of different groups? Evidence would be found in shifting patterns of intergroup attitudes, 

relationships, and connections rather than in new forms of political contentious action per se. 

For instance, anecdotal evidence suggests that in the Middle East text messages and Internetcirculated videos, such as the cell-phone video of the hanging of Saddam Hussein by what appeared to be a Shi’a militia, have circulated virally throughout the region and sparked genuine 

outrage, increasing “Sunni” identification among many Arabs. But the causal impact of these 

new media remains unclear. Further research questions include: 

■ Do new media foster or undermine connections among like-minded people or groups?

■ Do new media foster or undermine connections between different groups?

■ Do new media have a distinctive role in spreading propaganda or hateful images?

■ Do new media help reinforce in-group identity in preconflict and conflict situations?

■ Can new media be used to further cross-community communication in post-conflict 

situations? 

Link analysis is useful here, as linkages help measure contact within and across political or 

societal boundaries. Survey research can also suggest whether consumers of new media tend to 

consume material produced by people in their in-groups, people in their out-groups, or third 

parties. Finally, experimental research in the laboratory or field can best measure the causal 

impact of exposure to different kinds of media.

Collective Action

New media may also affect the potential for individuals and groups to organize, protest, or take 

other forms of collective action. For example, both the Iranian protests and the ethnic violence 

after the 2008 Kenyan election involved collective action, and both are cited, rightly or wrongly, 

as having been driven by new media. There are a number of plausible mechanisms through 

which new media can make action easier or more difficult.18 Social media may reduce the 

Do new media tend to 

“bond” group members 

to one another, or do 

they “bridge” members 

of different groups?

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BLOGS AND BULLETS

transaction costs for organizing collective action, by facilitating communication and coordination across both physical and social distance. The networked nature of social media may undermine hierarchical, top-down movements and generate new forms of “flat” social movements.19 

More broadly, new media may change the political opportunity structure by publicizing splits 

among the ruling elite, creating lines of communication for challengers to engage segments of 

the elite in new ways, or by drawing international attention to local problems. Yet another possibility is that new media will change perceptions about the real distribution of opinion within 

a society, so that others feel safer coming forward in support of a previously taboo position once 

they see how many online peers share their views. These possibilities point to several plausible 

research questions: 

■ Do new media reduce transaction costs for contentious political action? 

■ Do new media create “flat” rather than hierarchical networks of collective action?

■ Do new media more effectively create and disseminate focal points, such as the iconic 

image of Neda Agha-Soltan’s murder in Iran? 

■ Do new media change political opportunity structures (e.g., by attracting international 

attention, exposing internal elite divisions and fissures, or by building new openings into 

the political elite)? 

■ Do new media create different collective understandings of the distribution of societal 

opinion (i.e., change beliefs about what others believe)? 

This level of analysis would most likely require careful case study research in order to assess 

the changes produced by the various proposed mechanisms. 

Regime Policies

Much literature on new media and contentious politics has implicitly assumed that these new 

forms of communication primarily help activists against regimes. But although regimes have 

often been caught off guard by new media activism, they have also responded by co-opting, 

shutting down, or overwhelming activists.20 Regimes may learn from the experience of other 

countries and increasingly act preemptively against particular new media forms when conflict 

might be brewing (for example, China’s blocking Twitter during a tense period shortly after the 

Iranian “Twitter revolution”). Tactics at the disposal of such regimes, which often boast experienced and unconstrained intelligence services and secret police, include the direct repression 

of protesters (often facilitated by online records and identities), false-flag operations designed 

to disrupt opposition formations, interference with service providers (such as shutting down 

Facebook, Twitter, or even the Internet), and mobilizing their own defenders online. Such 

behaviors suggest these research questions, among others:

■ Do repressive regimes learn about how to deal with new media from other regimes’ 

experiences?

■ Is the learning curve getting easier for repressive regimes over time?21

■ Do leaders actively use new media to react to others’ use of new media, or both?

■ Can regimes use new media just as effectively as do citizens?

■ Can regimes divert attention from domestic challenges by using new media to whip up 

patriotism and xenophobia among their populations?

Regimes may learn from 

the experience of other 

countries and increasingly 

act preemptively against 

particular new media 

forms when conflict might 

be brewing.

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External Attention

New media may garner attention from outside actors, mobilizing political sympathy or hostility and creating new opportunities to generate power internally. The Iranian Twitterers, for 

instance, framed the confrontations around images and actions that attracted Western attention. But their success in doing so likely depended on the rebroadcast of images and footage 

in traditional (mostly English-language) media. Lebanon’s March 14 movement sought to use 

both old and new media to build a sense of identity with Western audiences, in ways denied 

to Hezbollah. The Save Darfur campaign has arguably attracted far more attention to that 

conflict than other conflicts in Africa have garnered. 

The limits of Internet solidarity are also clear. The Save Darfur movement mobilized attention and sympathy, but failed to save Darfur. The millions of Twitterers who colored their 

profiles green in support of the Iranian protesters could not prevent the Iranian regime from 

attacking its opposition. As one “tweet” cruelly put it, “Note to would-be revolutionaries: you 

can remove the green tint from your pictures now; it didn’t work.”22 The role of new media in 

shaping external attention and intervention leads to these questions:

■ What attracts external attention to one country (say Sudan) and not another (Congo)?

■ How does information bias (say, perceptions generated by liberal, educated “bridgebloggers”) distort external attention?23

■ Does external attention lead to “cheap talk” among external supporters like green Twitter 

profiles, or more costly actions (money, protest)?

■ Can international attention push protesters to take risks in the mistaken belief that they 

will get substantial support from abroad?

■ When, if ever, can external attention on its own have internal political consequences?24

■ Do new media create linkages with diasporas, and can these linkages lead to radicalization? 25

■ Do new media affect the ability of states to engage in counterinsurgency strategies?

Summary

These five levels provide an organizational framework for better understanding when new 

media serve a functional—and a dysfunctional—role in contentious politics. The hypotheses 

suggested at each level can then be tested using the guidelines for research design and the appropriate new data sources discussed in the first section. Do communication patterns online 

change in advance of or after outbreaks of contentious politics? Does communication across 

online networks resemble or differ from communication in off-line networks or the mass media? Is there evidence of individual attitude or behavioral change? This framework should also 

help inform policy priorities, whether related to rhetorical action (e.g., did Clinton’s “One Internet” speech have a blowback effect by reinforcing fears of U.S. hegemony online?) or active 

engagement in government-sponsored hacking in support of protest movements.26

This report next focuses on Iran, with reference where appropriate to other cases, to illustrate how this framework might be applied. But it must be emphasized that more questions 

than answers are presented, and that even preliminary assessments of these questions require 

systematic comparative research across a wider range of cases and with better data.

The limits of Internet 

solidarity are also 

clear. The Save Darfur 

movement mobilized 

attention and sympathy, 

but failed to save Darfur.

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Illustrating the Approach: Iran

The role of social media has been a major theme in the analysis of the turbulent events in Iran 

in the year following the June 12, 2009, presidential election. Many observers saw new media 

as a necessary (if not sufficient) cause of the dramatic rise of the protest movement following 

the election, while a subsequent backlash has sought to dismiss their significance. The stakes 

are high both for analysis and for policy, especially as a tentative consensus seems to have 

emerged that one of the few things that the United States can usefully do for the Iranian opposition is to push for more Internet freedoms.27 Our framework can help to sort through 

the conflicting claims by focusing on much more specific causal connections between the new 

media and Iran’s political process. 

There are reasons to expect new media to matter in Iran independently of observed outcomes. Iran has seen explosive growth in Internet use over the last several years; International 

Telecommunications Union data suggests that 32.3 percent of Iranians used the Internet in 

2007, compared to 4.7 percent in 2002.28 Among urbanized youth populations likely to be 

involved in contentious politics, Internet usage is almost certainly higher. It should come as 

no surprise that Iranian youth and reformists would rapidly take to the Internet as an outlet 

for expression and organization. The rapid evolution of a robust Iranian blogosphere in the 

2000s—and the regime’s subsequent crackdown when it became too prominent—echoes past 

experiences of the rapid rise of independent and reformist newspapers in the 1990s.29 Indeed, 

with an estimated 75,000 blogs, the Iranian blogosphere may exceed the size of its entire Arab 

counterpart.30

On the other hand, after a brief period of relatively liberal access to the Internet, the national government imposed a filtering regime that makes it difficult for citizens to access large 

numbers of Web sites. In fact, according to a recent study, the Internet was more heavily censored in Iran than in any country included in the sample.31 The government has also impeded 

the spread of broadband access, fearing that it would further enable Iranians to access sensitive 

cultural and political material that might undermine the government’s control over terrestrial 

broadcasting and challenge both prevailing mores and the regime’s legitimacy. As attention 

focused on the Internet’s role in the protests following the June 12, 2009, election, the government dramatically expanded its control over access and content.32

During the election campaign, supporters of both the incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his most important opponent, Mir-Hussein Mousavi, identified the Internet 

as a tool that might help the opposition to mobilize support. 33 For a brief period, the Iranian 

Telecommunications Ministry blocked access to Facebook, which opposition candidates had 

been using to communicate with some of their supporters.34 When the election was called in 

favor of Ahmadinejad, large numbers of people took to the streets to protest, claiming that the 

vote had been fixed. The government responded by arresting perceived leaders and intimidating others through beatings and shootings. Cell phone communications were shut down in 

Tehran, and Internet access, while not cut off, appears to have been rendered difficult and slow. 

Although demonstrations have becomes less frequent, the regime’s legitimacy has been seriously damaged. Despite threats, it has not so far arrested Mousavi, or Mohammed Khatemi or 

Ali Akbar Rafsanjani, two former presidents who were perceived as supporting the protesters 

and the defeated presidential candidate. There are clear signs of internal divisions within both 

the regime and the religious clerisy.

Even with the rise of government repression, new media gave Iranians more options for 

receiving and communicating information. However, this information is likely to be limited to 

The stakes are high both 

for analysis and for policy, 

especially as a tentative 

consensus seems to have 

emerged that one of the 

few things that the United 

States can usefully do for 

the Iranian opposition is 

to push for more Internet 

freedoms.

Even with the rise 

of government 

repression, new media 

gave Iranians more 

options for receiving 

and communicating 

information.

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PEACEWORKS 65

major news items and simple organizational information (such as the suggestion that protesters converge on a particular place at a particular time). More complex information is unlikely 

to spread beyond the actors who directly consume it. New media likely have a modest direct

effect on Iranians’ access to new information but a more significant indirect role. Although 

Iranians surely use the Internet for clandestine access to external media and news sources, they 

can also access them through more traditional means. Satellite dishes, although illegal, are 

relatively common, allowing access to BBC’s Persian-language service, the Voice of America’s 

Persian News Network (VOA Persian), Radio Farda, and other external sources of information and entertainment. The Iranian regime acted swiftly to prevent foreign journalists and 

others whom it suspected of mixed allegiances from covering protest activities. It also used its 

control of terrestrial broadcasting to disseminate proregime propaganda about the protests, to 

the point that the main Iranian broadcaster’s credibility was seriously damaged.35 This meant a 

dearth of traditional news content that was sympathetic to the perspective of the protesters. 

But this time, both Iranian citizens and satellite television services turned to new media. 

Journalists in traditional media, for example, followed Iranian new media to mine it for information and ideas that then received wider dissemination. VOA Persian relied extensively on 

homemade video of the protests, which was sent by Iranians to a special account on YouSendIt 

and uploaded to Facebook, YouTube, and other online service providers.36 The BBC’s Persianlanguage service, which enjoys more credibility among Iranians than VOA Persian, also relied on content uploaded by its users.37 It would be useful to follow the flows of information 

through networks linking the old and new. 

Many observers clearly see new media as central to the evolution of the opposition after 

the June 2009 election. Indeed, it has become fashionable to argue that leveraging the Internet 

is the key to finishing the job and allowing the Green Movement to drive the Islamist regime 

from power.38 At what level did new media have the greatest impact? And how might they be 

expected to affect Iranians in the future?

Individual Transformations

There is ample anecdotal evidence from participants in the Iranian Green Movement of an 

appreciation for the Internet’s role in opening up new possibilities and connections but little 

systematic data about the Internet’s significance. To assess whether and how individuals in Iran 

are being transformed by new media, detailed survey data that tracked change over time, or 

compared Internet users to nonusers, would be needed. In the absence of such data, this assessment is limited to plausible inferences drawn from indirect indicators. 

One area of clear impact stems from the combination of extensive Internet use and pervasive filtering, which has led some Iranians to cultivate important skills. Those who wish to 

access forbidden content have had to employ clandestine techniques, including proxy services 

such as Psiphon and The Onion Router (Tor). Since Iran filters culturally sensitive content 

(e.g., movies) as well as political content, more Iranians than just politically active dissidents 

have had the incentive to develop these skills. There is some evidence that these skills were 

deployed after the election. VOA Persian saw a rapid increase in use of its proxy service in the 

immediate aftermath of the election, stretching capacity so far that an unknown number of 

users could not access the services.39 Tor, a well-known relay system for “anonymized” Internet 

browsing, recorded a substantial increase in the use of its services by Iranians, and a particularly large increase in the use of its unlisted “bridge” relays during this time (see figure 1). The 

significance of such new competencies is uncertain, however. Individuals already conversant 

New media likely have a 

modest direct effect on 

Iranians’ access to new 

information but a more 

significant indirect role.

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BLOGS AND BULLETS

with the Internet may have simply learned new tricks, while the wider mass public found their 

Internet access disrupted.

There is also anecdotal evidence that new media and text messaging have affected the political identities and perceived solidarities of individual Iranians. Tara Mahtafar claims that the 

Mousavi campaign was successful in creating text-message viral chains, where people would 

forward political slogans and anti-Ahmadinejad jokes to one another.40 The effects of these 

jokes on people’s identity and beliefs about what is politically possible should not be discounted, 

as they may have had a significant impact in the lead-up to Ukraine’s “Orange revolution.”41

Intergroup Relations

Iranian civil society flourished in the 1990s, long before there was significant Internet penetration, with a dense network of newspapers and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) providing the architecture for the reform movement that coalesced around Mohammed Khatemi 

in the 1997 presidential election. Civil society provided the forum for robust public debate 

about the nature of the Islamic Republic, women’s rights, democracy, and reform. After Khatemi’s election, the conservative establishment struck back, using state power to systematically 

dismantle independent civil society—closing newspapers, arresting and harassing intellectuals, 

and blatantly intervening in the political process. Prior to the mobilization around the 2009 

presidential election, the general consensus among Iranians and outside experts alike was that 

the reform movement had collapsed. Have new media created different possibilities for civil 

society? Independent of actual protest behavior, have new media tended to build bridges across 

political divides or to reinforce those preexisting conflicts?

The rapid growth of the Iranian blogosphere in recent years offers one window into propositions about the impact of the new media on intergroup relations and civil society, through 

careful study of the linkage patterns and political and cultural affiliations of Persian-language 

blogs.42 However, one should be cautious in extrapolating from the linkage patterns observed 

100

200

400

600

800

1,000

1,200

1,400

Percent Increase 

from June 1 

June 1 June 8 June 15 June 22 June 29, 2009

Figure 1. Rate of Change in Iranian Bridge Users on the Onion Router

Source: Tor

There is also anecdotal 

evidence that new media 

and text messaging have 

affected the political 

identities and perceived 

solidarities of individual 

Iranians. 

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PEACEWORKS 65

between these blogs to communication patterns in other new media, let alone to off-line patterns of communication and personal exchange. It is difficult to research political affiliations on 

social networking services such as Facebook except in a superficial way (e.g., by comparing the 

size of groups affiliated with the different presidential candidates). There are no independent 

sources of information on instant text messaging. Nonetheless, blogs play an important cultural 

role in their own right in Iran.43

Studying linkage patterns demonstrates quickly that the Iranian blogosphere does not 

equate to the movement for political reform, nor indeed map onto a simple opposition 

between progovernment and antigovernment forces.44 Instead, the Persian-language blogosphere is loosely organized around a number of clusters that are largely composed of bloggers with shared interests (see figure 2). These clusters include not only reformists, secularists, 

and religious conservatives, but also bloggers interested in Iranian poetry, Persian literature, 

“CyberShi’a” religious speculation about the “Twelfth Imam,” and mixed-topic blogging.

The relative size of and relationships among these clusters has changed over time. In the 

past at least, conservative and reformist/secular bloggers have paid considerable attention to one 

another—as measured by outgoing links from the one to the other45—and future work might 

seek to establish whether this is still true. In addition, there have been historical moments where 

literary and political blogs engage in dense discussion with one another.46 Thus, the Iranian blogosphere plausibly resembles a genuine online civil society, albeit one with significant fractures. 

For example, many religious bloggers appear relatively uninterested in politics, contrary to what 

many Western observers might expect, and their political interests are not easily predictable 

when they do manifest themselves. During the Iran election, more—and more important—

CyberShi’a blogs linked to Mousavi’s Web site than to Ahmadinejad’s (see figure 3).

Figure 2. Network Map of the Iranian Blogosphere at the Time of the 2009 Election

Source: Morningside Analytics

Note: Larger dots represent the most linked to sites. 

Studying linkage patterns 

demonstrates quickly that 

the Iranian blogosphere 

does not equate to the 

movement for political 

reform, nor indeed map 

onto a simple opposition 

between progovernment 

and antigovernment 

forces.

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BLOGS AND BULLETS

To the extent that blogs are creating an online civil society in Iran, it seems to be friendlier 

to reformists than to religious conservatives. During the election period, Mousavi’s Web site 

unsurprisingly received many links from secular and reformist blogs. More interesting is that 

it also received significant numbers of links from bloggers interested in literature and poetry rather than politics. Ahmadinejad’s Web site, in contrast, received few links from anyone 

other than political conservatives and a couple of reformists more likely interested in criticizing 

than agreeing with him (see figure 4). It is important to stress that these relationships cannot 

be generalized to the Iranian population at large. However, they do suggest that Mousavi’s 

candidacy interested a broader range of bloggers (including nonpolitical bloggers) than did 

Ahmadinejad’s. To the extent that the Persian-speaking blogosphere influences the future of 

Iranian politics, it is likely to help, not hurt, the reformist cause. 

The new media movement of today lacks the institutional infrastructure that characterized 

reformists in the early Khatemi years. Future research should focus upon whether the virtual 

civil society created by new media can meaningfully substitute for one built on face-to-face 

interaction and concrete organizations. It should also focus on questions about the impact of 

these relationships on collective identities and views of others in society: do users of new media 

now have harsher or more tolerant views of their political adversaries?

Collective Action

Most of the attention paid to new media in Iran has focused on its role in facilitating 

collective action against the Iranian regime, particularly the organization of marches and 

demonstrations.47 “The main opposition, the Green Movement, has supported and sustained itself by information distribution,” argues one typical analysis. “Prompt and mass 

Figure 3. Network Map of Linkages within the Iranian Blogosphere to Mousavi’s Web Site

Source: Morningside Analytics

Note: Larger dots represent most linked to sites.

Future research should 

focus upon whether the 

virtual civil society created 

by new media can 

meaningfully substitute 

for one built on faceto-face interaction and 

concrete organizations. 

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PEACEWORKS 65

communication is vital, given that it is a viral movement made up of many different camps 

collaborating to protest government corruption and authoritarianism.”48 New media may 

have helped protesters coordinate and to establish frames to cast the Green Movement in a 

positive light, expose information embarrassing to the regime, and communicate and coordinate the goals of the movement at times when face-to-face contact was difficult and risky. 

Twitter’s impact on the protests was almost certainly extremely modest, despite its prominence in driving external attention to the conflict (see the report’s discussion of “external attention”). There were probably too few active Twitter users in Iran for it to drive any mass 

mobilization. Sysomos reports that there were approximately 8,500 Twitter users who selfreported as Iranian in May 2009, and Gaurav Mishra claims that less than 100 of those were 

active during the election period.49 Such numbers pale compared to the hundreds of thousands 

of Iranians who participated in the protest movement at some point. The “Facebook protest” in 

Colombia generates comparable arithmetic: the number of Colombians who had a Facebook 

account was dwarfed by the apparent size of the demonstrations.50 A similar conclusion can be 

drawn about the role of Kenyan blogs in monitoring the violence after the 2008 Kenyan election. The reach of these blogs, relative to traditional media such as radio, was limited.51

Numbers can be misleading, however. Social movements are often sparked and shaped by 

small numbers of motivated activists who set an example for the broader public. Twitter and 

other new media could have played an indirect role by communicating information to and 

among elites, who then disseminated it more widely among the general population through 

online and off-line networks. It is difficult to document this, since any new media effects are 

likely to have been swamped by other media with wider circulation. For example, Mousavi’s 

call for mass protests on June 25 was not only circulated on Twitter, but also carried by VOA 

Persian and the BBC’s Persian-language service, which circumvented jamming efforts by 

broadcasting from new satellites.52

Figure 4. Network Map of Linkages within the Iranian Blogosphere to Ahmadinejad’s Web Site

Source: Morningside Analytics

Twitter’s impact on the 

protests was almost 

certainly extremely 

modest, despite its 

prominence in driving 

external attention to the 

conflict.

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BLOGS AND BULLETS

Some groups have described using new media to overcome regime repression and to organize for protests. In Iran, the most useful and flexible means of organizing protest was SMS 

text messaging, especially in a country with a high rate of mobile phone usage. However, the 

Iranian government was entirely aware of the risks of SMS access and shut down the SMS 

system for a two-week period.53 Iranians did have somewhat patchy access to the Internet, 

and media such as Facebook and blogs may have communicated very basic information about 

protest activity to Iranians with Internet access (such as the sites of major rallies). As already 

noted, their effects are impossible to distinguish from those of more traditional media (satellite 

TV), which was communicating the same information.

Another way in which new media affected collective action was by facilitating communication and coordination for those who could not easily meet face to face. New media helped to 

link disparate groups and individuals in the absence of formal organization or effective leadership. For instance, Ali Qolizadeh, a Tehran University student activist, described the movement’s organization like this: “Small groups of 20 or 30 students band together using social 

media and operate locally, for instance, distributing fliers door-to-door in their neighborhoods. 

. . . It is because of the virtual nature of our organizing activities that the government does 

not have the power to suppress us. It is the key to our success.”54 Such forms of networked 

organization have weaknesses as well as strengths, however. The absence of clear leadership 

or internal control opens up opportunities for the regime to sow divisions among opponents. 

It also makes it harder to fashion a coherent political message or strategy. This happened in 

Colombia, for example. The Facebook protesters there possessed diverse and not entirely compatible agendas: opposition to the FARC; opposition to kidnapping; the desire for peace and 

negotiations between the FARC and the government; support for Álvaro Uribe; and opposition to Hugo Chávez. Notably, the families of the remaining hostages chose not to participate, 

believing the protest to be “polarizing.”55

New media also played an interesting and important role in framing protest activity. 

As scholars of social movements have long argued, framing—the creation of group understandings regarding the meaning and significance of particular aspects of politics—is often 

crucial to collective action.56 Cultural entrepreneurs who dislike the status quo seek to create frames that will inspire others to protest. For instance, Andrew Sullivan suggested that 

an exhortation on Twitter inspired Iranians to call out “God is great” from their rooftops 

to protest at the regime.57 This form of protest was already part of the Iranian repertoire of 

dissidence, having played an important role in the unrest leading up to the Islamic revolution against the Shah. Thus, Twitter did not create the idea but perhaps alerted protesters 

to the potentially resonant frame. Regime sympathizers may also create counterframes 

that seek to reconcile citizens to the status quo—denouncing protesters as pawns of the 

United States and Israel, for instance, to render them politically toxic within much of Iranian society. 

Thus, online content was available both directly and indirectly. While this content was 

sometimes shakily sourced, it did frame the unrest in ways that favored the protesters and 

disfavored the regime. Uploaded video depicted large-scale and mostly peaceful demonstrations, as well as violence by the regime against protesters. To the extent that this framing 

took hold, it suggested that the demonstrations were an expression of general popular unrest. 

Politicians who favored the demonstrators were also assiduous in their efforts to suggest that 

the demonstrations were a continuation (and renewal) of the revolution that had toppled 

the Shah. They also took pains to distance themselves from the United States, as the Obama 

New media helped to 

link disparate groups and 

individuals in the absence 

of formal organization or 

effective leadership. 

Framing—the creation 

of group understandings 

regarding the meaning 

and significance of 

particular aspects of 

politics—is often crucial 

to collective action.

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PEACEWORKS 65

administration wisely abstained from overt advocacy on their behalf during the crucial moments when general impressions were formed and narratives established. 

There is little but anecdotes about how this framing was received by Iranians. However, the 

available body of scholarship suggests that it affected those with direct access to these media 

and that it was disseminated further through existing networks. Satellite television and social 

networking services such as Facebook distributed videos of the killing of one young woman, 

Neda Agha-Soltan, caught up in the march.58 Research suggests that it is important for protesters to signal to the general public that they are “like them” and not oddballs or fanatics.59

Agha-Soltan, who appeared to be a quite ordinary (albeit telegenic) young woman who covered her hair in the approved Islamic style, plausibly helped demonstrators argue that ordinary 

Iranians were organizing the protests (and being killed by the regime), not foreign agitators 

and lackeys whom the regime publicly blamed. Agha-Soltan’s visibility as a victim may have 

helped weaken the regime over the longer term, in ways that would have been less likely had a 

different victim of the regime been highlighted in media coverage.

Future research should follow up with detailed qualitative and quantitative data gathering on the relationship between new technology and social protest movements. Qualitative 

accounts could replace existing (and possibly unrepresentative) anecdotes with specific information about the extent to which different groups used new technologies. Are new media 

typically used by urban elites, or by other segments of the population? How are they used in 

practice? Quantitative information (both survey polls and nontraditional methods of passive 

information gathering on individuals’ online behavior) could help supplement qualitative accounts with a broader understanding of the relationship between new media and protest. Are 

there different adoption rates for different technologies? What relationship do new media 

play with traditional media, and with networks of personalized communication in spreading 

information? Are protesters more likely to be inspired to political action by traditional media 

or new media? How do text-based media and visual media differ in their consequences for 

contentious action?

Regime Policies

Of course, the protesters were not the only actors seeking to frame the events of June in politically congenial ways. The Iranian regime responded to protesters’ use of the Internet in a 

number of ways.60 First, it has sporadically sought to block access to new media by throttling 

Internet access, disrupting SMS text messaging, and targeting and blocking particular Web 

sites where regime opponents are seen as having an advantage. Second, it has tried to create its 

own new media strategy by encouraging government sympathizers to blog and use Twitter and 

Facebook and other platforms in support of the regime’s position. Third, it has sought to frame 

its opponents’ use of the Internet and other media as reflecting their domination by foreign 

interests. Even if the Internet initially helped the protest movement, it later helped the regime 

crack down on this movement.

Evidence suggests that during the immediate period surrounding the election, Internet 

services were disrupted. However, how much this was due to the Iranian government, as opposed to the combination of limited capacity and a massive surge in Internet use, is not clear.61

It is clear, however, that the Iranian censorship regime targeted a wider set of Web sites during 

the period surrounding the election. Roughly half of the thirty most important antiregime 

blogs were inaccessible, as was the popular blogging host site, Blogfa.62 Figure 5 shows the 

frequency of posts by Iranian bloggers from June 7 to June 25, 2009, and suggests that the 

Even if the Internet 

initially helped the protest 

movement, it later helped 

the regime crack down on 

this movement.

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BLOGS AND BULLETS

crackdown curtailed blogging for the three days after the election. However, blogging returned 

to preelection levels soon thereafter, suggesting that Twitter was not the only way to get information from Iran.

Social networking sites such as Facebook were also blocked during the election period. 

Protesters and their supporters sought to evade these controls through both sophisticated 

(the use of proxy servers) and simple means (e-mail to supporters outside Iran). For example, 

the man who took the video of Neda Agha-Soltan’s death did not upload it himself, instead 

e-mailing it to a friend who forwarded it to VOA.63 SMS text messaging was made unavailable shortly before the election and for some two weeks after it. Mobile telephones were also 

unusable in the period directly surrounding the election, which may have been intended to 

disrupt an effort by an organization associated with Rafsanjani to monitor polling stations 

around the country.64

Efforts to disrupt access to the Internet went together with efforts to mobilize regime 

supporters via the Internet. These efforts seem to have been less successful than the efforts 

of regime opponents. Previous efforts by the Revolutionary Guard to encourage members of 

the Basij (the regime’s volunteer paramilitary militia) to blog may possibly have helped spur 

the surge in religious blogging discussed earlier. However, these new religious blogs have been 

notably uninterested in politics. Efforts by a dozen conservative bloggers to create YouTube 

videos putting out their side of the story appear to have attracted only a small audience. The 

regime’s postelection efforts to mobilize Iranian Internet users to denounce protesters seem to 

have had little success. Gerdab.ir, a Web site set up by the Revolutionary Guard to allow Iranians to identify protesters from photographs (hence facilitating their arrest), has generated little 

interest, including from conservative bloggers. Even proregime conservatives may be unwilling 

to identify themselves with the regime’s internal security apparatus, given controversies over 

the beatings, torture, and possibly rape and murder of detained protesters. Proregime actors 

have tried to organize themselves on Twitter and other social media in the wake of the protests, 

both to spread disruptive rumors and to communicate a proregime message.65 This could make 

it more difficult for protesters to use these tools in the future, although the threat that online 

4,000

6,000

8,000

10,000

Number of Posts

June 7

election

June 21

Figure 5. Frequency of Posts by Iranian Bloggers, June 7–25, 2009

Source: Authors’ data

Efforts to disrupt access 

to the Internet went 

together with efforts 

to mobilize regime 

supporters via the 

Internet. These efforts 

seem to have been less 

successful than the efforts 

of regime opponents. 

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evidence may be used to identify and arrest dissidents provides a more direct disincentive to 

future public online activity.

Finally, the regime has sought to frame dissidents’ use of technology by suggesting that 

they are subservient to foreign interests. Early commentary suggested that Mousavi was following a “deceptive campaign strategy, which was a mixture of Obama’s model in 2008 and 

some deceptions and lies of the colored revolutions.”66 The request of a U.S. State Department 

official that Twitter postpone a temporary shutdown of its service has been depicted in Iranian 

media as evidence of a “Twitter plot” by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to undermine the 

Iranian revolution.67 This raises an important question about blowback for policymakers, given 

that American policymakers and pundits often retell this story as a way of trumpeting their 

successful role in the Green Revolution. Similarly, Iranian state-influenced media depicted an 

Israeli newspaper’s use of material from antiregime Twitterers as evidence that the unrest was 

backed by an Israeli conspiracy.68 More recently, the government has sought to use its opponents’ reliance on publicly available social networking sites against them in mass trials, and to 

indict Twitter and YouTube as part of a massive global conspiracy against the Islamic Revolution.69 As with the frames of protesters and their allies, we do not know how these frames have 

been received by the Iranian public.

Future research could examine more rigorously how regimes’ use of new media has changed 

over time. Incumbent regimes adapt in response to the experience of other regimes, but the 

limits to learning are not known. Nor is it known whether learning occurs through passive 

observation or active information sharing. Current work by researchers at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society and the University of Toronto has done much to establish basic 

comparative information on governments’ Internet-censorship regimes. However, relatively 

little is known about patterns of dissemination over time, about active use of new media by 

authoritarian governments, or about how non-Internet media (cell-phone text messaging) are 

used and censored by incumbent regimes. 

Here, automated data collection can supplement existing information on censorship 

regimes with new information on active use of the Internet to disseminate information 

and propaganda by existing regimes. Web-scraping technologies can gather large amounts 

of information from official and unofficial newspapers, government Web sites, sites run 

by individual or collective actors linked to the regime, and sympathizers in the population. Meme tracking can establish the circumstances under which incumbent propaganda 

becomes more widely disseminated among government and nongovernment sites. Extraordinarily little is known about how incumbent regimes use the Internet actively, even 

though this is becoming ever more important. Gathering data would allow the mapping of 

relevant relationships, and, over time, test causal arguments about the kinds of tactics 

adopted by governments, the take-up of government arguments in new media more generally, and so on.

External Actors

Where Twitter and other new media clearly did matter is in how they conveyed information 

about the protests to the outside world. Traditional media were at a disadvantage in covering 

events inside Iran because of restrictions placed on journalists, and thus ended up relying on 

new media for content. Hence, the outside world’s perceptions of the protests were crucially 

shaped by Twitter (as conveyed through blogs and other means), amateur videos uploaded to 

YouTube and Facebook, and other sources. This intense focus on Iran cannot necessarily be 

Extraordinarily little 

is known about how 

incumbent regimes use 

the Internet actively, even 

though this is becoming 

ever more important. 

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BLOGS AND BULLETS

replicated in other cases, however, as external attention tends to converge on some issues and 

not others for reasons demanding further research. 

To show how new media helped to focus attention on Iran, the authors of this study drew 

on the Media Cloud platform to examine stories that focused on Iran in U.S. political blogs 

and professional media outlets from May 10 to July 10, 2009. For the purposes of comparison, 

the authors also examined stories that focused on two other major conflicts, Sri Lanka and 

Darfur, as well as a major media event, the death of Michael Jackson. 

Figure 6 presents the number of sentences devoted to each of these four stories—with 

separate plots for the newspapers and blogs that Media Cloud currently monitors. Newspapers 

and blogs should not be compared directly in terms of the total volume of coverage; rather, it is 

the patterns of coverage in each that are of interest. In both American newspapers and blogs in 

late June, the Iranian elections were prominently covered. Similarly, another monitoring effort, 

that of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, found that the Iranian protests occupied 28 

percent of the news hole in its sampled set of media in the week ending June 24, outpacing all 

other stories. 

Interest in the Iranian protests may have peaked in the blogosphere before peaking in 

newspapers. Blog interest peaks on June 6, with 463 sentence mentions. A second blogosphere 

peak appears on July 2,but more than half the blog sentence references that day come from 

Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish. This second peak appears to be less connected to outside events 

and more connected to Sullivan and team’s enthusiasm on that day. However, both blog and 

newspaper interest in the Iran story drops sharply after Michael Jackson’s death was announced 

on June 25. This is an important, if disheartening, reminder that both new and old media alike 

can be distracted from geopolitics when celebrities shuffle off this mortal coil. 

Media Cloud also captures the content of the indexed sentences by analyzing word frequency. The algorithms discard the most common words and count the appearance of remaining words, comparing the frequencies across sources and groups of sources. Figure 7 

shows the terms most closely associated with stories about Iran found in the system during 

Iran

Darfur

Sri Lanka

Michael Jackson

0

500

1,000

1,500

2,000

Number of 

Sentences

May 10 June 1 July 1

Newspapers

Iran

Darfur

Sri Lanka

Michael Jackson

0

100

200

300

400

500

Number of 

Sentences

May 10 June 1 July 1

Blogs

Figure 6. Newspaper and Blog Coverage of the Iranian Election, Michael Jackson’s Death, 

Sri Lanka, and Darfur

Source: Media Cloud

Both new and old media 

alike can be distracted 

from geopolitics when 

celebrities shuffle off this 

mortal coil.

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the two months of analysis. Perhaps surprisingly, the term “Mousavi” appears far less frequently than does “Ahmadinejad.” This suggests that, despite the attention devoted to the 

protests themselves, the incumbent remained a more visible figure in news coverage than did 

the challenger.

Although Media Cloud does not include data from Twitter, the exploratory techniques 

outlined here work well with Twitter data. Gilad Lotan of Microsoft Research collected a set 

of 269,000 Twitter messages (“tweets”) associated with the Iranian elections between June 12 

and June 30. Analyzing three 5,000-message chunks sampled from Lotan’s set—from the 

beginning, middle, and end of this period—suggests how the dialogue on Twitter changed 

over the course of two weeks. Figure 8 presents the number of tweets for popular phrases 

during each period. Some phrases were common in all periods—for example, the obvious 

“iranelection” and the Twitter abbreviation “rt” (for “re-tweet,” or pass along a message). Others 

appeared mainly in one period. A major topic after the election is “CNNfail,” a term applied 

by Twitter users to CNN’s failure to cover the Iranian elections with live reporters on the day 

of balloting. By the middle of this period, a peak day for Iran-focused Twitter activity, discussion had shifted to rallies and discussions of recounts. In the last period, “Neda” (Agha-Soltan) 

emerges as the fifth most popular term.

Accurately identifying the content of new media is only part of the story, of course. What 

of its effects? Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink suggest how activists living under an oppressive regime can leverage the support of actors abroad.70 They argue that when the regime 

is unresponsive to activists, these activists may seek support from actors in other states, which 

will then bring pressure on the original regime in a “boomerang effect.” The key conditions 

that allow this to work are transnational networks of activists, states other than the existing 

regime that are responsive to these activists, and tools that these states can use to pressure 

the existing regime. Activists attempted to follow this model, for instance, with the creation 

of the “United for Iran” network that organized solidarity protests across the United States 

through Facebook.71

The Iranian election suggests that new media can partially substitute for activist networks. They allow communication to take place across borders, and forms of international 

solidarity to spring up relatively quickly. Although blogs and other media focused on Iran 

only for a short period of time, they engaged in solidaristic action. The Obama administration appeared partially receptive to this message. While the administration was careful not 

to express overt support for the demonstrators, which could have been used by the Iranian 

regime to delegitimize protests, it did signal its sympathies implicitly, by, for example, asking 

Figure 7. Word Cloud of the Terms that Appear in Stories about Iran, 

May 10–July 10, 2009

Note: Word size represents the relative frequency of appearance, with the largest words appearing in 

stories most frequently. 

Source: Media Cloud

The Iranian election 

suggests that new media 

can partially substitute for 

activist networks.

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BLOGS AND BULLETS

a blogger/journalist who had been highly active in covering the protests, Nico Pitney of the 

Huffington Post, to ask a question “on behalf of ” the protesters.

However, the administration could exert little pressure on the Iranian regime. Its influence was limited by the history of hostile relations between the two countries, a lack of useful 

contemporary relationships (commercial relations between the two countries being practically 

nonexistent because of existing sanctions and restrictions), and complications arising from the 

ongoing indirect negotiations over nuclear technologies. The United States provided mostly 

symbolic assistance (e.g., asking Twitter not to temporarily shut down for maintenance). Other 

countries were either in much the same position as the United States or disinclined to support 

protesters against an existing regime. 

Thus, there was little prospect of any short-term “boomerang effect.” Nor are there many 

other obvious causal pathways through which outside influence could have had significant 

internal consequences. It is likely, as discussed earlier, that externally based media (satellite television and perhaps some Internet sources) that rebroadcast directly into Iran helped protesters 

coordinate and demonstrate that the protests had significant support. However, this is perhaps 

better regarded as outside actors helping internal actors indirectly to connect with wider audiences, rather than outside influence as such. Expressions of international solidarity may have 

affected the attitudes of protesters inside Iran, but any effort to assess these attitudes would be 

at best highly speculative.

Future research should provide a more rigorous account of the circumstances under which 

external action can have internal consequences. By combining data scraped from domestic and 

external media, it could examine the circumstances under which information and memes disseminate from one to the other, the key interlocutors, possible distortions or changes in how 

information is contextualized in both, and so on. By combining this data with external data 

sources (on, for example, patterns of funding and internal and external collective action), one 

could tentatively uncover causal relationships (if any) between online communication across 

borders and actual political outcomes.

0 2,000 4,000

Number of Tweets

people

president

cnn

twitter

website

police

victory

mousavi

irans

cnnfail

tehran

election

stopahmadi

iranian

moussavi

elections

ahmadinejad

iran

rt

iranelection

Early

0 2,000 4,000

Number of Tweets

support

rally

election

been

moussavi

iran9

please

people

blocked

iranian

stopahmadi

twitter

recount

iranians

gr88

ahmadinejad

tehran

iran

rt

iranelection

Middle

0 2,000 4,000

Number of Tweets

cnn

oxfordgirl

world

free

elections

protest

irans

election

people

iranian

green

mousavi

tehran

stopahmadi

gr88

neda

ahmadinejad

iran

rt

iranelection

Late

Figure 8. Number of Tweets Citing Each Term ( June 12–30, 2009)

Source: Gilad Lotan, Microsoft Research

It is likely . . . that 

externally based media 

(satellite television and 

perhaps some Internet 

sources) that rebroadcast 

directly into Iran helped 

protesters coordinate 

and demonstrate that the 

protests had significant 

support. 

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PEACEWORKS 65

Conclusions and Further Directions

Conventional wisdom often assumes the world is like a Hollywood movie, in which bad guys 

with all the tools of oppression at their disposal can be brought down by a band of plucky citizens armed with little more than cell phones and Twitter accounts. In the real world, dictatorial 

regimes are not nearly as vulnerable, citizens not nearly as organized, and new media not nearly 

as powerful as these narratives assume. Regimes, such as those in Iran and China, have vast resources of repression with which to control their populations and the media, old and new. Real 

revolution is usually slow to come, if at all. A year after the “Twitter revolution,” Ahmadinejad 

is still in power, although his regime has lost considerable legitimacy. Similarly, conventional 

wisdom often paints too rosy a picture of the role of new media in contentious politics, assuming it to be an agent of democracy and peace. In fact, social networking and other new media 

technologies can just as easily be used to radicalize, exclude, and enrage. 

Policymakers have an especially tricky tightrope to walk, as evidenced by the reactions 

to Clinton’s “One Internet” speech. Both the Iranian and Chinese governments used it as a 

pretext for rallying their media and citizens against perceived American hegemony. There are 

diplomatic and strategic ramifications to how policymakers talk about the role of new media in 

challenging authoritarian regimes. More troubling is the potential moral hazard: such rhetoric 

may lead regime opponents to believe that the international community will protect and support them with more than words and green Facebook pages. Ultimately, as Clinton implicitly 

suggested in her address, more and better study of new media’s role in contested political action is needed to make good policy. As this report has argued, these future studies need to be 

cross-cultural, theoretically grounded, empirically varied and sophisticated, and perhaps most 

importantly open-minded about technology’s strengths and weaknesses.

What specific recommendations emerge from present findings?

■ Be skeptical of sweeping claims about the democratizing power of new media. 

Although new media can plausibly shape contentious politics, they are only one among a 

number of important political factors. As this report demonstrates, there remain massive 

gaps in our knowledge about their effects at multiple levels and the interaction among 

those levels. The suggestions for improved research design and data in this report are not 

simply the methodological complaint of academics. If policymakers hope to act effectively, they need to get the causal mechanisms right or else risk wasting effort and 

resources on ineffective actions—or even making things worse

■ Acknowledge the good and bad effects of new media. Opening up the Internet may not 

be a panacea. While a free media may improve the prospects for collective action, the 

effects on intergroup relations may be more troubling. As the genocide in Rwanda 

illustrated, traditional media can be used to mobilize and organize ethnic conflict, leading to mass violence—and there is no reason to assume that new media will pay attention 

if it does, or that such attention will lead to international intervention. New media may 

be more likely to promote polarization and to provide targeted communication channels 

for already polarized groups than do traditional forms of broadcasting and mass media. 

If the United States and other democratic countries want to construct new media platforms, they can adopt one of three broad approaches. First, they can limit use of the 

platform to groups that are unlikely to foment conflict or violence. This makes it less 

likely that the platform will have harmful consequences, but also less likely that the 

platform will succeed. Second, they can seek to engineer platforms so as to encourage 

Policymakers have an 

especially tricky tightrope 

to walk, as evidenced by 

the reactions to Clinton’s 

“One Internet” speech.

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BLOGS AND BULLETS

exchange rather than polarization between different groups. Third, they can provide 

fully open platforms, mindful of the possible risks associated with them. But each of 

these approaches is problematic in its own way.

■ Beware of backlash. Although the sentiment behind the push for Internet freedom is 

admirable, efforts to help antiauthoritarian movements by providing access to new media 

platforms may have unintended consequences. Regimes remain well financed and effective in their determined efforts to hold on to power, and usually find ways to adjust to 

new challenges to their control. In future situations of unrest, despotic governments will 

likely do a better job of disseminating disinformation and using it to discredit nontraditional channels of communication. The United States needs to carefully balance its 

efforts to promote such freedoms with the risk of a backlash discrediting the activists it 

hopes to support.

■ Do not mistake information for influence. Absent a “boomerang effect” feedback loop, 

or some other meaningful mechanism, information dissemination to the outside world is 

insufficient to effect significant domestic change. Providing information and content via 

new media to the outside world can generate sympathy and support, and can also allow 

this content to be rebroadcast to the country in question. However, unless the outside 

world can generate real pressure on the regime, or otherwise be helpful, this is unlikely 

to do more than provide a modest feeling of solidarity. Activists should recognize these 

limits and work, for example, with less sexy but more robust forms of communication and 

organization such as wall posters—while leveraging the advantages that new media can 

sometimes present.

It is important to find a proper balance between knee-jerk skepticism of technology’s 

promise and the techno-utopianism that too often plagues public discourse. As a first step, this 

report has outlined the research problem, constructed a framework for further analysis, and 

discussed important new sources of data for that analysis. The next step, the authors believe, 

is to develop these data sources as part of a rigorously designed research program. This would 

generate useful knowledge for academics and policymakers alike about how new media does 

and could affect contentious politics. 

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PEACEWORKS 65

Notes

1. Mark Pfeifle, “A Nobel Peace Prize for Twitter?” Christian Science Monitor, July 6, 2009, www.csmonitor.

com/2009/0706/p09s02-coop.hmtl.

2. “Respekt: Police Fail to Protect Victims of Neo-Nazi Threats,” Prague Daily Monitor, September 15, 2009, 

http://praguemonitor.com/2009/09/15/respekt-police-fail-protect-victims-neo-nazi-threats; Joe Powell, 

“Amid Censorship and Threats Ugandans Turn to New Media,” Independent, September 23, 2009, www.

independent.co.ug/index.php/column/comment/70-comment/1817-amid-censorship-and-threatsugandans-turn-to-new-media; Josh Goldstein and Juliana Rotich, Digitally Networked Technology in Kenya’s 

2007–2008 Post-Election Crisis, Internet and Democracy Case Study Series (Cambridge, MA: Berkman 

Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University, September 29, 2008), http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/

publications/2008/Digitally_Networked_Technology_Kenyas_Post-Election_Crisis.

3. Cass Sunstein, “Neither Hayek nor Habermas,” Public Choice 134, no. (2008): 87–95; Michael Gerson, 

“Banish the Cyber-Bigots,” Washington Post, September 25, 2009, www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/

content/article/2009/09/24/AR2009092403932.html. For a data-driven discussion, see Eric Lawrence, 

Henry Farrell, and John Sides, “Self-Segregation or Deliberation? Blog Readership, Participation, and 

Polarization in American Politics,” Perspectives on Politics 8, no. 1 (2010): 141–157. For an alternative perspective, see Yochai Benkler and Aaron Shaw, A Tale of Two Blogospheres: Discursive Practices on the Left and 

Right (Cambridge, MA: Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University, 2010).

4. We use “contentious politics” as a shorthand for actions by individuals, groups, and regimes that typically 

entail contestation over political means or ends.

5. For more on this, see figure 6 of this report.

6. Joshua A. Keating, “Lost in #Haiti: How Haiti’s Disaster Showed Twitter’s Limits as a News Medium,” 

foreignpolicy.com, January 22, 2010, www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/01/22/lost_in_haiti.

7. James K. Glassman and Michael S. Doran, “The Soft Power Solution in Iran,” Wall Street Journal, January 

21, 2010, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704541004575011394258630242.html; 

Mehdi Khalaji and Scott C. Carpenter, “America and the Iran Political Reform Movement: First Do No 

Harm,” testimony before House Committee on Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and 

South Asia, February 3, 2010, www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC14.php?CID=512.

8. “New media” is an admittedly unsatisfying term that encompasses a diverse array of outlets, such as blogs, 

“social” media (e.g., Facebook), audiovisual hosting services (e.g., YouTube), text messaging (SMS), Twitter, 

e-mail, and chat rooms. While any nomenclature can be challenged, the term “new media” is a convenient 

shorthand for various primarily Internet-based communication technologies and methods that most people 

can readily differentiate from “old” media. New media generally involve user-generated content, interactivity, and dissemination through networks, but new media differ in their characteristics and potential political 

consequences. Indeed, perhaps the most important moments involve information that appears on multiple 

platforms. 

9. In part, this involves simply limiting or preventing the use of new media. This also involves the proactive 

mobilization of new media technologies. For example, Israel’s government has enlisted an “army of bloggers” 

to defend its policies online; China has done the same with its “50 Cent Army”; and Nigeria has sought to 

recruit bloggers to defend the government online (see “Umaru Yar’adua Regime Launches $5 Million 

Online War,” Sahara Reporters, June 16, 2009, www.saharareporters.com/news/3024-umaru-yaraduaregime-launches-5-million-online-war-.html).

10. Evgeny Morozov, “How Dictators Watch Us on the Web,” Prospect, November 18, 2009, www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2009/11/how-dictators-watch-us-on-the-web/.

11. Lawrence, Farrell, and Sides, “Self-Segregation or Deliberation.” 

12. Jure Leskovec, Lars Backstrom, and Jon Kleinberg, “Meme-Tracking and the Dynamics of the News Cycle” 

(unpublished paper, Cornell University, 2009). 

13. Dale Eickelman, “New Media in the Arab Middle East and the Emergence of Open Societies,” in Remaking 

Muslim Politics, ed. Robert Hefner (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006); Jon Anderson, “New 

Media, New Politics: Reconfiguring the Public Sphere of Islam,” Social Research 70, no. 5 (Fall 2003): 

887–906.

14. Sharon Otterman, “Publicizing the Private: Egyptian Women Bloggers Speak Out,” Arab Media & Society

1 (Spring 2007), www.arabmediasociety.com/topics/index.php?t_article=28.

15. Evgeny Morozov, “The Brave New World of Slacktivism,” foreignpolicy.com, May 19, 2007, http://neteffect.

foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/05/19/the_brave_new_world_of_slacktivism; Samantha Shapiro, “Revolution, 

Facebook-Style,” New York Times Magazine, January 2009, www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/magazine/

25bloggers-t.html?_r=1&ref=world.; David Faris, “Revolutions without Revolutionaries? Network Theory, 

Facebook, and the Egyptian Blogosphere,” Arab Media & Society 6 (Fall 2008), www.arabmediasociety.

com/?article=694; Bikya Masr, “Stop, Look, What’s that Sound. . .the Death of Egyptian Activism,” 

BikyaMasr, February 8, 2009, http://bikyamasr.wordpress.com/2009/08/02/bm-opinion-stop-look-whatsthat-sound-the-death-of-egyptian-activism/. For instance, the creators of a Facebook “Save the Children of 

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BLOGS AND BULLETS

Africa” application attracted 1.3 million members, who collectively donated just over six thousand dollars. 

In Egypt, millions signed up for Facebook groups protesting government politics, but only a handful actually 

showed up in the streets to protest. Indeed, many Egyptian activists believe that cheap Internet solidarity 

actually harmed the protest movement, as would-be protesters stayed home and blogged.

16. Evan Kohlmann, “The Real Online Terrorist Threat,” Foreign Affairs 85, no. 5 (September/October 2006) : 

115–124; Marc Sageman, Leaderless Jihad (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2008).

17. Cass Sunstein, “The Law of Group Polarization,” in Debating Deliberative Democracy, ed. James Fishkin and 

Peter Laslett, 80–137 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). 

18. Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly, Dynamics of Contention (New York: Cambridge 

University Press, 2001).

19. Benkler and Shaw, A Tale of Two Blogospheres.

20. Morozov, “How Dictators Watch Us on the Web.” 

21. Steven Heydemann, Upgrading Authoritarianism in the Arab World, Analysis Paper no. 13 (Washington, DC: 

Brookings Institution, October 2007). www.brookings.edu/papers/2007/10arabworld.aspx.

22. Kevin Donovan, Twitter post, August 23, 2009, http://twitter.com/evgenymorozov/status/3489960834.

23. Ethan Zuckerman, “Meet the Bridgebloggers,” Public Choice 134 (2008): 47–65; Marc Lynch, “Blogging the 

New Arab Public,” Arab Media & Society 1 (Spring 2007), www.arabmediasociety.com/?article=10.

24. Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998).

25. Jennifer Brinkenhoff, Digital Diasporas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Clifford Bob, The 

Marketing of Rebellion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 

26. Steven Mufson, “Chinese Government Sharply Criticizes Clinton’s Speech Urging Internet Freedom,” 

Washington Post, January 23, 2010, www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/22/

AR2010012201090.html?hpid=topnews&sid=ST2010012102095; Evgeny Morozov, “Is Hillary Clinton 

Launching a Cyber Cold War?” foreignpolicy.com, January 21, 2010, http://neteffect.foreignpolicy.com/

posts/2010/01/21/cyber_cold_war. 

27. Glassman and Doran, “The Soft Power Solution in Iran”; Nicholas Kristoff, “Tear Down This Cyberwall!” 

New York Times, June 17, 2009; National Iranian American Council, ”NIAC Urges Swift Action on Internet 

Freedom,” niac.org, March 2, 2010, www.niacouncil.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5916.

28. International Telecommunications Union, Measuring the Information Society: The ICT Development Index

(Geneva: International Telecommunications Union, 2009). Cell phone use has grown even more rapidly over 

the same period, from 3.4 percent to 41.8 percent.

29. Geneive Abdo and Jonathan Lyons, Answering Only to God: Faith and Freedom in 21stCentury Iran (New 

York: Henry Holt, 2003); Asef Bayat, Making Islam Democratic: Social Movements and the Post-Islamist Turn

(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007). 

30. See Richard Weitz, “Iran’s Grassroot Voices and the Blogosphere,” Eurasia Review, April 14, 2010, 

www.eurasiareview.com/2010/04/irans-grassroots-voices-and-blogosphere.html.

31. Ronald Deibert, John G. Palfrey, Rafal, Rohozinski, and Jonathan Zittrain, Access Denied: The Practice and 

Policy of Global Internet Filtering (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2008). 

32. John Kelly and Bruce Etling, “Mapping Iran’s Online Public: Politics and Culture in the Persian 

Blogosphere,” Internet and Democracy Case Study Series (Cambridge, MA: Berkman Center Research 

Publication, Harvard University, April 2008); Nasrin Alavi, We Are Iran: The Persian Blogs (New York: Soft 

Skull Press, 2005).

33. Ali Erfan, “Reformist Musavi’s Poll Strategy Backed by West, BBC-Iran Analyst,” BBC Worldwide 

Monitoring, July 26, 2009; Thomas Erdbrink, “In Iran Election, Tradition Competes with Web,” 

Washington Post, June 9, 2009, www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/08/

AR2009060804090.html.

34. Thomas Erdbrink, “Iran Blocks Facebook, Outlet for Opposition; Lively Discussions on June 12 Vote Took 

Place on Web Site,” Washington Post, May 25, 2009, www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/

2009/05/24/AR2009052401599.html.

35. “Iranians Flood VOA with Videos, E-mails; Broadcaster Launches New Show,” Voice of America, June 15, 

2009, www.voanews.com/english/About/2009-06-15-iran-breakfast-show.cfm.

36. Ibid.

37. Mary Beth Sheridan, “Persian News Network Finds New Life in Contested Iranian Election,” Washington Post, 

June 18, 2009, www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/17/AR2009061703853.html.

38. Glassman and Doran, “The Soft Power Solution in Iran”; Khalaji and Carpenter, “America and the Iran 

Political Reform Movement.”

39. “Broadcasting Board of Governors Battles Signal Interference by Multiplying Broadcasts of Persian 

Programs to Iran,” Broadcasting Board of Governors, June 22, 2009, www.bbg.gov/pressroom/pressreleases-article.cfm?articleID=421.

40. Ibid.

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PEACEWORKS 65

41. O. Britsyna and I. Golovakha, “The Folklore of the Orange Revolution.” Folklorica 10, no. 1 (2005): 3–18. 

42. Kelly and Etling, “Mapping Iran’s Online Public.”

43. Alavi, We Are Iran.

44. Kelly and Etling, “Mapping Iran’s Online Public.”

45. Ibid.

46. Alireza Doostdar, “The Vulgar Spirit of Blogging: On Language, Culture, and Power in Persian Weblogestan,” 

American Anthropologist 106, no. 4 (2004): 651–662.

47. Marc Ambinder, “The Revolution Will Be Twittered,” Atlantic, June 15, 2009, http://politics.theatlantic.

com/2009/06/its_too_easy_to_call.php; Peggy Noonan, “Whose Side Are We On? You Have to Ask?” 

Wall Street Journal, June 19, 2009, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124535660563828707.html; Brad 

Stone and Noam Cohen, “Social Networks Spread Defiance Online,” New York Times, June 15, 2009, 

www.nytimes.com/2009/06/16/world/middleeast/16media.html; Andrew Sullivan, “The Revolution 

Will Be Twittered,” Atlantic, June 13, 2009, http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_

dish/2009/06/the-revolution-will-be-twittered-1.html.

48. “Technology and U.S. Foreign Policy,” Tehran Bureau, December 31, 2009, www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/

frontline/tehranbureau/2009/12/technology-and-foreign-policy-in-iran.html.

49. “A Look at Twitter in Iran,” Sysomos Blog, June 21, 2009, http://blog.sysomos.com/2009/06/21/a-lookat-twitter-in-iran/; Gaurav Mishra, “Updated: The Irony of Iran’s ‘Twitter Revolution,’” Gauravonomics 

Blog on Social Media and Social Change, June 17, 2009, www.gauravonomics.com/blog/the-irony-ofirans-twitter-revolution/. It is not clear where Mishra’s data comes from.

50. Nick Burcher, “Facebook User Numbers by Country and Facebook Usage by Country as Percentage of 

Population,” nickburcher.com, www.nickburcher.com/2008/07/facebook-user-numbers-by-country-and.

html; Christina Neumayer and Celina Raffl, “Facebook for Protest? The Value of Social Software for 

Political Activism in the Anti-FARC Rallies,” DigiActive Research Series, December 2008, www.

digiactive.org/wp-content/uploads/research1_neumayerraffl.pdf.

51. Scott Baldauf, “Positive Radio Brings Calm to Tense Kenya Slum,” Christian Science Monitor, January 11, 

2008; Ivor Tossell, “Understanding Kenya, One Click at a Time,” Globe and Mail, February 15, 2008.

52. Aidan Lewis, “BBC Persian Works Round Restriction,” BBC, June 23, 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/

middle_east/8113882.stm.

53. Joshua Tucker, “From Kiev to Tehran? Can Ukraine’s Orange Revolution Teach Us Anything about Today’s 

Protests in Iran?” New Republic, June 15, 2009, www.tnr.com/article/politics/kiev-tehran.

54. Tara Mahtafar, “United Students of Iran,” Tehran Bureau, December 17, 2009, www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/

frontline/tehranbureau/2009/12/united-students-of-iran.html. 

55. Sibylla Brodzinksy, “Facebook Used to Target Colombia’s FARC with Global Rally,” Christian Science 

Monitor, February 4, 2008, www.csmonitor.com/2008/0204/p04s02-woam.html.

56. Robert Benford and David Snow, “Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and 

Assessment,” Annual Review of Sociology 26 (August 2000): 611–639.

57. Ibid.

58. Suad Jafarzadeh, “Neda’s Death in Street Creates an Internet Icon,” Washington Times, June 24, 2009, www.

allbusiness.com/government/elections-politics-politics-political-parties/12531134-1.html; Robert Tait 

and Matthew Weaver, “The Accidental Martyr: How Neda Became the Face of Iran’s Struggle,” Guardian

(London), June 23, 2009.

59. Susanne Lohmann, “The Dynamics of Information Cascades: The Monday Demonstrations in Leipzig, 

East Germany, 1989–1991.” World Politics 47, no. 1 (1994): 42–101.

60. Evgeny Morozov, “Why the Internet Is Failing Iran’s Activists,” Prospect, January 5, 2010, www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2010/01/why-the-internet-is-failing-irans-activists/.

61. Jim Cowie, “A Closer Look at Iran’s State of Internet, Strange Transit Changes in Wake of Controversial 

Election,” CircleID Internet Infrastructure, June 14, 2009, www.circleid.com/posts/

20090614_closer_look_at_iran_internet_strange_changes.

62. Rob Faris and Rebekah Heacock, “Cracking Down on Digital Communication, Political Organizing in 

Iran,” Open Net Initiative, June 15, 2009, http://opennet.net/blog/2009/06/cracking-down-digitalcommunication-and-political-organizing-iran.

63. Brian Stelter and Brad Stone, “Web Pries Lid Off Censorship a Bit,” New York Times, June 22, 2009, www.

nytimes.com/2009/06/23/world/middleeast/23censor.html.

64. Faris and Heacock, “Cracking Down on Digital Communication.”

65. Christopher Rhoads and Geoffrey A. Fowler, “Iran Pro-Regime Voices Multiply Online,” Wall Street 

Journal, July 3, 2009, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124658422588090107.html.

66. Erfan, “Reformist Musavi’s Poll Strategy Backed by West.” 

67. “US Admission of Involvement in Iran Unrest Shows ‘Plot’ Failure,” BBC Worldwide Monitoring, August 

19, 2009, www.monitor.bbc.co.uk/.

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68. Ricky Ben-David and Rachel Geizhals, “Daily Denies Alleged Israeli ‘Conspiracy’ to ‘Stoke Unrest’ in Iran 

via Twitter,” BBC Monitoring Middle East, June 18, 2009.

69. Rhoads and Fowler, “Iran Pro-Regime Voices Multiply Online.” 

70. Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders.

71. Neri Zilber, “Global Solidarity 2.0,” Tehran Bureau, August 4, 2009, www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/

tehranbureau/2009/08/global-solidarity-20.html. The activities of the United for Iran network can be seen 

at http://united4iran.com/.

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 3

About the Institut

The United States Institute of Peace is an 

independent, nonpartisan institution established 

and funded by Congress. Its goals are to help 

prevent and resolve violent conflicts, promote 

post-conflict peacebuilding, and increase conflict 

management tools, capacity, and intellectual 

capital worldwide. The Institute does this by 

empowering others with knowledge, skills, and 

resources, as well as by its direct involvement in 

conflict zones around the globe.

od ofDires

J. Robinson West (Chair), Chairman, PFC Energy, 

Washington, D.C. • George E. Moose (Vice Chairman), Adjunct Professor of Practice, The George 

Washington University, Washington, D.C. • Anne 

H. Cahn, Former Scholar in Residence, American 

University, Washington, D.C. • Chester A. Crocker,

James R. Schlesinger Professor of Strategic Studies, 

School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, 

Washington, D.C. • Ikram U. Khan, President, 

Quality Care Consultants, LLC., Las Vegas, Nev. • 

Kerry Kennedy, Human Rights Activist • Stephen 

D. Krasner, Graham H. Stuart Professor of Interna-

tional Relations at Stanford University • Jeremy A. 

Rabkin, Professor of Law, George Mason University, 

Arlington, Va. • Judy Van Rest, Executive Vice 

President, International Republican Institute, 

Washington, D.C. • Nancy Zirkin, Executive Vice 

President, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Members Ex Offi

Michael H. Posner, Assistant Secretary of State for 

Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor • 

James N. Miller, Principle Deputy Under Secretary of 

Defense for Policy • Ann E. Rondeau, Vice Admiral, 

U.S. Navy; President, National Defense University • 

Richard H. Solomon, President, United States Institute 

of Peace (nonvoting)

PW65_cover_2A.indd 3 8/18/10 12:33:
4 Looking for Justice United States Intitute of Peace  • 1200 17th Street W • Wahigton, DC

From Iran to Kenya to Colombia, the impact of new and social 

media on movements for political and social change has been the 

subject of much discussion and controversy. In this report from 

the United States Institute of Peace’s Centers of Innovation for 

Science, Technology, and Peacebuilding, and Media, Conflict, and 

Peacebuilding, a team of scholars from The George Washington 

University, in cooperation with scholars from Harvard University 

and Morningside Analytics, takes a fresh theoretical and empirical 

approach to this question. The paper critically assesses both the 

“cyberutopian” and “cyberskeptic” perspectives and proposes 

a more complex approach that looks at the role of new media in 

contentious politics from five interlocking levels of analysis: individual transformation, intergroup relations, collective action, regime 

policies, and external attention. 

Peacewoks •  August200  •  

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