Twitter, the Medium of the Movement

It's free, highly mobile, very personal and very quick — just the perfect ingredients to "protect the interests of Iranians using the service to protest the presidential election that took place on June 12", says journalist Lev Grossman of 'Time' in an article June 17.

"This makes Twitter practically ideal for a mass protest movement, both very easy for the average citizen to use and very hard for any central authority to control," he added.

In contrast to email and Facebook, which are not public, Grossman said that Twitter is "built to spread, and fast", and tend to get picked up and retransmitted by other Twitterers. The medium, he continued, can also be received and read on practically anything with a screen and a network connection.

"On June 13, when protests started to escalate, and the Iranian government moved to suppress dissent both on- and off-line, the Twitterverse exploded with tweets from people who weren't having it...," he said.

"While the front pages of Iranian newspapers were full of blank space where censors had whited-out news stories, Twitter was delivering information from street level, in real time..."

To read the full report, click here.