Twitter in Tehran

June 16, 2009 12:16 PM

What Twitter feeds will keep me abreast of the situation in Iran?

According to news reports, Twitter is being used as a reporting tool by protesters in Iran, especially now that foreign media is being shut out. I was wondering if the collective consciousness knew of any particuarly interesting or informed feeds I could follow for updates.

posted by HabeasCorpus to law & government (16 answers total)

from NPR
(there are links in this article when you click on the link to go to it at npr.org)
More #Tags For Tweets About Iran
By Mark Memmott

It's becoming increasingly apparent that Twitter is playing an important role in getting news out of Iran.

For those who use that site, the #tag for posts and searches has been #IranElection. (To the uninitiated, a # mark followed by a search term is a way to flag your tweet so that others can find it.)

Now, Twitter users are reporting that Iran's government might be blocking #IranElection. They're recommending others be used as well: #Iranians, #Tehran and #Iran9.

Update at 10:16 a.m. ET: At All Tech Considered, NPR's Eyder Peralta writes about how Twitter's being used by Iranians to find online servers that haven't been blocked by the government.

Update at 10:05 a.m. ET: "iranStreeNews" tweets that "people are gathering around in front of Radio and TV HQ in Vali Asr St The situation is calm and everyone is silent." It adds this -- #GR88 -- to the hashes.

Related story: The BBC reports about the videos that Iranians are managing to get out to the world.
posted by sio42 at 12:24 PM on June 16, 2009

The raw feed is #iranelection. Warning, it moves fast.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 12:24 PM on June 16, 2009

wow, no kidding brandon blatcher - i've just been watching that the last few minutes.
yikes.

sorry for minor derail.
posted by sio42 at 12:28 PM on June 16, 2009

I've been following StopAhmadi for a few days.
posted by Unred at 12:30 PM on June 16, 2009

Trying to keep up on #iranelection will also leave you with anyone that's outside Iran trying to disseminate information. persiankiwi is very frequently updated.
posted by mkb at 12:43 PM on June 16, 2009 [1 favorite]

daily dish on atlantic magazine site

not sure where it's coming from but pics too.
can't say nsfw but maybe not safe for sensitive folks.

*sigh*
posted by sio42 at 12:46 PM on June 16, 2009

Twitter is being used to spread misinformation as well.
posted by sswiller at 12:57 PM on June 16, 2009

persiankiwi is probably one of the more reliable sources. The actual #iranelection tag is mostly crap at this point. "PLZ RT: RANDOM RUMOUR"
posted by chunking express at 1:15 PM on June 16, 2009 [1 favorite]

This Reddit thread has some interesting stuff. There was also a thread (several actually) on fark that pointed to various twitter feeds. I don't know what you can trust as valid right now though.
posted by chairface at 1:26 PM on June 16, 2009

Thanks everyone! I'm aware of #iranelection, but am also getting a lot of crap at this point. Individual feeds that have some semblence of reliability, or have people vouching for them-like persiankiwi- are what I'm looking for.

I know it's difficult if not impossible to weed out misinformation on social networking sites, but I have some faith in metafilter's critical eye.
posted by HabeasCorpus at 1:39 PM on June 16, 2009

persiankiwi definitely. changeforiran is a student tweeter who was in a university dorm with a severely wounded friend on Monday. iranelection09 has been retweeting quite a few tweets in Farsi, along with translations.

On the Web, TehranLive has been posting photos and videos when possible.
posted by catlet at 2:05 PM on June 16, 2009

Another reader of persiankiwi here.
posted by Neiltupper at 2:09 PM on June 16, 2009

And for your misinformation needs...
posted by pompomtom at 4:39 PM on June 16, 2009

This is a bit off-topic (only sorta), but word is out that if you want to help cover Iranian bloggers who are being targeted by the government, change your twitter settings to location Tehran, and time zone GMT +330 (Tehran) so it's harder for them to pick out the real Iranian twitterers. Not sure if it will be effective, but it's being spread around like wildfire.
posted by ishotjr at 4:42 PM on June 16, 2009

In addition to Persiankiwi and Change_for_Iran, there's also madyar and mousavi1388.

On the first Metafilter post, the TweetGrid was linked. You might look at it. It allows you to see tweets in a grid form, from multiple people at the same time. You can add or subtract people from the grid, as you wish.
posted by Houstonian at 6:47 AM on June 17, 2009

Looks like persiankiwi got arrested. Shit. :(
posted by mkb at 2:24 PM on June 30, 2009