If the Nobel Peace Prize can be swayed by public opinion, then Twitter would be the run away winner of the coveted international award.
Twitter became the way the world learned of the revolt against the Iranian election.
As the violence grew, traditional journalists were forced out of the country, leaving only citizens and their cell phones and Twitter to reveal to the outside world the violent crackdowns against protests.
The Twitter revolution came to it's peak when Neda Agha-Soltan was murdered and Twitter carried the wails of her friends and family to not die.
She was the struggle and Twitter documented it.
Neda was the voice and Twitter was the way her ideals were driven around the world.
Twitter was the mechanism by which the world learned of the brave people who stood up against what they considered to be government oppression.
Twitter gave the power back to the people. It persuaded other people that Iran could not resolve the disputed election peacefully.
It enabled the world to show it's support of a free Iran, buy a simple gesture of changing avatars to green. 140 characters at a time, the Iranian people engaged the world and held it's attention to focus on why Iran is an oppressive state.
Twitter was a change agent that has never been seen before.
Perhaps because of the 140 character limit it held users to specific and sharp thought, rather than the long-winded emails and blogs that otherwise would have covered the story.
Other social media have played a part, but from Mashable.com's Ben Parr, more than 221,000 Iran tweets were sent in one hour. In one day, 3,000 Iranian videos were uploaded on YouTube, and 2.2 million blog entries were posted.
There are no "friends" in Twitter that limit the delivering of the message. Hashtags (#iranelection) allowed the world to read every dispatch from Iran and tweet or retweet the message.
No one can argue the importance of Twitter in bringing Iran to the center of the world stage and putting a spotlight on a national election and the disturbing reaction of the citizens.
For that, Twitter, it's founders, deserve a Nobel Price for Peace.
Comments
Wow you are dumb.
Seems a little too similar to this article which came out yesterday in the Christian Science Monitor, to not have even cited the work of Former Deputy National Security Advisor Mark Pfeifle.
Read the original article here. www .csmonitor.com/2009/0706/p09s02-coop.html
This piece is totally plagiarized from that op-ed. What a rip-off! What ever happened to citing sources? Just google Mark Pfeifle and "A Nobel Peace Prize for Twitter?"
Leevan, your editor should can you.
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