The Twitter Revolution and Counterrevolution

Last year I did a post on the many commentators who observed the protests in Iran and declared that the protesters’ primary tool of protest was Twitter. One after another thinker and speaker termed it a “revolution,” as when Clay Shirky announced, “This is it. The big one.” He called the protests “the first revolution that has been catapulted onto a global stage and transformed by social media.” I’ll have a post on Shirky next week.)

And here was Andrew Sullivan’s prediction: “It reveals in Iran what the Obama campaign revealed in the United States. You cannot stop people any longer. You cannot control them any longer. They can bypass your established media; they can broadcast to one another; they can organize as never before. … The key force behind this is the next generation, the Millennials, who elected Obama in America and may oust Ahmadinejad in Iran. They want freedom; they are sick of lies; they enjoy life and know hope.”

Ahmadinejad would read those lines today with a smirk. So would Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. He has discovered not the revolutionary potential of Twitter, but the opposite. Here’s a note in the Huffington Post entitled “Chavez to Venezuelans: Use Twitter to Tattle on Speculators.”

Currency speculation is spreading in the nation because of price controls, etc., and Chavez wants neighbors to watch one another and pass on any information.

“My Twitter account is open for you to denounce them,” Chavez said during his weekly radio and television program. “We’re going to launch several raids. We’ve already launched some raids, thanks to the complaints from the people.”

Yes, Chavez has his own Twitter account. Apparently, in the first two days he gathered 106,000 followers.  His lead invitation was to Fidel, who is one of the only five people whom Chavez follows himself.  (Yes, Castro has a Twitter account, too.) More numbers appear here at TechCrunch.

Of course, the real conflict here will not be individuals recruited to spy on one another by the state vs. individuals struggling to maintain their privacy and prerogatives. It will be between a leader who can’t stop talking and the 140-character limit of the tweet.