

What if Twitter is leading us all astray in Iran? - noheartanthony
http://trueslant.com/joshuakucera/2009/06/15/what-if-we-are-all-wrong-about-iran/

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marcusbooster
It's just that laypersons are now seeing the global news feed. You've always
had a mountain of eyewitness accounts of breaking news events with varying
degrees of accuracy; but now you can see every single one of them posted on
twitter.

It's a journalists job to explore, verify, and report. I don't think it's bad
to have access to all the chatter, but sometimes information needs context
from an editor for an accurate picture to emerge. If you are not supplementing
all of this information with some intelligent analysis then it's easy to get
caught up in "trending topics".

~~~
jmtulloss
I'm not confident in the ability of the common internet user to distinguish
interesting but unverified chatter from quality reporting. Despite the saying
"don't believe everything you read", I think a lot of people do.

~~~
netsp
We don't have perfect choices. Imperfect journalism with limited access or
access to the chatter. There is bad journalism too. People tend to be less on
guard themselves when presented with bad or biased journalism. At least with
twitter, people are less inclined to take everything at face value.

Anyway, I am confident. Earlier on people were making ridiculous arguments
about how the internet is an untrustworthy source of information. All sorts of
things that were highly speculative or untrue where being put online. Douglas
Adams compare this to saying you can't believe everything you here on the
telephone. I think this applies here too.

Twitter is new. People don't know how to treat it properly yet. The
information you hear on a bus can be unreliable. It shouldn't be treated as a
perfect sample. It may contain the opinions of crazy people, biased people &
bus drivers. But it's still information. People are good at sifting through
this kind of information.

~~~
gaius
Indeed. I'm reminded of Fisk's reports from Baghdad during Gulf War II, which
in retrospect turned out to have been mostly made up (e.g. he reported
fighting at Baghdad Airport that simply didn't happen, as embedded journalists
who were actually on the scene pointed out).

But as he was saying what his fans wanted to hear (i.e. that lots of US
soldiers were getting killed) his career blossomed nonetheless.

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haseman
Sadly, Twitter is the best we can get right now. Does this mean we should
ignore it? Absolutely not. Should we trust it without question? No way. We as
a culture need to get used to "pseudo-news" chatter that we get from twitter.
It's not verified reporting, but that doesn't mean it's worthless.

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TomOfTTB
The problem is people don't put the information they're given up to scrutiny
anymore. So much is being force fed to them that they've started to just take
it sight unseen. Let me take the three examples the author gives…

* 3 million people protested in Tehran: I was just pointing this out to someone. If you truly had 3 million people and they stood in the road you'd have 5 people across. Take those 5 rows and have everyone line up behind them. In that case 3 million people would go on for roughly 114 miles (assuming about a ft of depth per person). It would be visible from space.

More important, a few thousand Iranian police wouldn't stand a chance against
a group 3 million strong. They could overthrow the capital with that many
people.

* Mousavi under house arrest: Possible but pretty stupid. This is the most plausible of the ones listed but it would be suicide for the ruling party to do so it stands to logic they wouldn't.

* the president of the election monitoring committee declared the election invalid on Saturday: If you've watched the news for any amount of time you know the election committee can't invalidate an election the Ayatollah has approved of.

So under basic scrutiny all these claims seem unlikely. If people are
believing them on face value they clearly aren't putting much thought into
what they believe and that's the problem.

~~~
batasrki
Not that I don't agree with your assertion of scrutiny, but...

1) If you watched any of the videos shot by foreigners and Iranians alike,
you'd notice that there were at least 50 across if not more. This makes your
calculation wrong by an order of magnitude. The videos are there to prove it.

2) Mousavi being under house arrest and then let out due to pressure caused by
so many people marching and protesting is a more likely scenario. Don't
underestimate the stupidity of snap decisions made when the reaction was
unexpected.

3) The president of the election committee can dissent with the Ayatollah,
even if it were dangerous for him personally to do so. Also, Ayatollah went
back on his proclamation a day later and asked for an inquiry into the
elections. This makes that the president's claim that much more valid.

None of these claims are unlikely, but caution must be exercised anyway. I'd
rather believe the people in the streets than what someone from the media can
tell me. If you don't believe me, watch the Twitter streams. There's a lot of
misinformation there, but also a lot of good information. Sifting through this
is a journalist's job.

~~~
TomOfTTB
I'll shoot it right back at you because I don't necessarily agree with you
either (all your points could be valid) but at that point, for me, it comes
down to Twitter.

All the points listed are "state changes". Protestors went from a group of 10s
of thousands to allegedly 3 million, Mousavi went from being a free man to
being under house arrest and the elections president went from supporting the
election to allegedly calling it into question.

Now, if I hear news of a "state change" such as there my first question is
"what's the source. If it's an anonymous guy on Twitter I don't jump to
believe it. If it's the BBC I probably think it's possibly true.

So it still comes down to cognitive process or the lack there of represented
by people who believed this stuff.

Oh, and btw, since it's a pet peeve of mine. Even if some areas are 50 across
I have to believe the crowd would have spilt into narrower areas (since no
venue is designed to hold 3 million people). But even at a constant 50 across
you're still talking about almost 12 miles worth of people.

~~~
batasrki
I agree that state changes being reported by one person are not necessarily
true. However, a state change being reported similarly by multiple unconnected
sources is helluva more believable. Also, remember that BBC/CNN/etc. did not
jump on this story. As a matter of fact, they've ignored it for the whole
weekend, even when their international stations were reporting it on other TV
channels. Who knows what their motivation for that is, besides verification
(which might not have been possible, considering that communication sources
were progressively jammed by security forces).

As for the number of people goes, if you take a look at the videos, you'll get
a clearer picture as to how many people there are. From what I saw, it was 50+
across and it was pretty consistent width as far as the camera could see. I'm
not saying that 3 million is accurate, I was just saying that videos show a
lot more than 5 across and that's where you were off. ;)

~~~
kevinpet
Well, the issue is that now with twitter there's no such thing as "multiple
unconnected sources". You don't know who is independently corroborating
something, and who is parroting.

~~~
batasrki
True, for Twitter news. However, there's been other sources, such as
Huffington Post who have been getting similar reports through e-mail and
YouTube.

Those sources are not connected to Twitter, so no parroting there.

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far33d
As to the house arrest rumor, when I saw it go by on twitter it was usually
marked as unsubstantiated, and it was quickly replaced by reports he was not
under house arrest.

If you are going to focus on a twitter feed, you need to be a more critical
reader, but it seems to be quickly self correcting.

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philwelch
This is why it's vitally important that photos and videos are getting out.
Anyone can tweet that the Basij are shooting people, but photos of bloody
corpses in the streets are evidence enough.

Also, some accounts are more reliable than others to follow.

~~~
Devilboy
In the future world depicted in Ghost in the Shell technology has advanced to
the point where creating 'perfect' fake video footage has become trivial. As a
result, anonymous videos of important incidents are mostly useless unless a
trusted news organisation or government can back up the reports.

~~~
philwelch
Indeed: Ahmadinejad's supporters have released photoshopped images showing
that the rallies _supporting_ the regime are bigger than they are in reality.
Trick photography was used for a similar affect by the US in Baghdad.

However, it will remain difficult to have multiple corroborating photographs
of the _same_ event that all match up. Making the truth match up is easy, but
making forged videos and photos consistent when lots of separate people are
releasing them is hard because it's hard to keep lies of any kind consistent
without the liars being in cahoots.

Which means that reports from random people are probably _more_ reliable than
journalists or governments. Governments and news organizations can collaborate
on a lie better than mobs.

------
makecheck
What leads us astray is a failure to invest (intellectually) in the news as
much as previous generations did. Some of this isn't a sign of intelligence,
it's just a question of how people spend their time.

Are people willing to read a full page analysis, and are they willing to
_wait_ while someone dredges up the tidbits to make that page? Or, are they at
least willing to do their own research? Not really, and I think that's the
real point of the article. It's not that sources are necessarily bad, but that
it takes time to know which are good. Ironically, the impatience that gave us
instant access to information has now created so much information that it
takes _more_ time to process it all.

Twitter is just the latest example of being able to instantly talk to the
world, and it feeds on everyone's impatience. News organizations know this
too, that's why we have a culture of "breaking news" where all that's needed
for relevance is to be the channel that brought you the story: even if there
is no story yet, and you're seeing 4 hours of pontificating over a recycled
video clip.

~~~
notmyname
You are right, but Twitter (and, really, anything on the Internet) has the new
feature of being persistent. Rumors in a crowd die out when more information
comes to light. The unfailing memory of the Internet, combined with anonymity
and its massive reach, creates an echo chamber that can reinforce false
information long after the truth has been revealed.

------
madair
It's healthy to be skeptical of all the news. Twitter just makes it more
obvious.

------
jballanc
We really don't need Twitter to spread false information and have a non-
trivial fraction of the population believe it wholesale: What about Obama's
birth certificate? I heard he was a muslim. You know he hates the United
States...etc. I think that the reaction of the author here is more of a
reaction to new technology than an observation of a new phenomenon. The
classic game of "telephone" is as old as humanity itself.

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Tichy
I wonder, were there any forecasts for the Iranian election (you know, asking
a couple of people and interpolating)? It would be difficult to fake those?
Could give a likelihood for the election results to be false or not.

Also, aren't there any satellites pointed at Iran? Couldn't they be used to
estimate the number of demonstrators?

~~~
bilbo0s
There were predictive estimates.

Washington Post estimated Ahmadinejad victory by margin of 2:1 about 3 weeks
before the election based on polling data.

There are also rumors sifting out of the intelligence community that the
margin was expected to be about 2:1.

Obviously the rumored intelligence report I cannot verify.

The Washington Post report is elaborated on here:

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8101841.stm> (Just search the article
text for 'Washington Post' if you are not interested in the rest.)

I'm starting to get the feeling that this was not a rigged election.

~~~
brown9-2
That Washington Post survey you mention is flawed for a number of reasons, the
main being that while it showed Ahmadinejad ahead 2:1, it was only with 33.8%
saying they'd vote for Ahmadinejad, 13.6% for Mousavi, and a full 42.5% of the
respondents saying that they were either undecided or would not answer the
question.

Obviously a survey in which the amount of undecideds is far greater than the
amount saying they will vote for a candidate is hardly evidence of strong
polling for that candidate.

More: [http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/06/did-polling-
predict-a...](http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/06/did-polling-predict-
ahmadinejad-victory.html)

~~~
bilbo0s
Let's suppose, however, that 100% of the undecided went for Mousavi. Well, he
would have just barely won, about 55-56%. It is statistically improbable that
100% went for Mousavi. So while we are not talking about something that was
mathematically impossible, we are talking about something that was
statistically improbable.

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ramoq
Another good point to note is that the winner of this election has little to
no power at all within the Iranian state. In fact, I think he has close to
zero say in any policy making. The Ayatullah runs the show people
(completely). Does it really matter who won?

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m0th87
Perhaps social media tools are amplifying dissenting voices in Iran, but I'd
argue it's more of a consequence of the Iranian government's policies than
anything else. Skepticism of the electoral process wouldn't have arisen in the
first place if it were open and there existed institutions (i.e. free press)
to protect against exploitation. If there was more independently verifiable
information provided by the Iranian government, rumors and exaggerations
wouldn't explode through these communication mediums. Data wants to be free.
Let it :)

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greengirl512
Twitter can be a great source of information , but only if you can
independently verify what's being said. The problem is, there's no way for us
to do that in Iran, except to rely on the more traditional media and
journalists. That's what always gets me when I read Twitter boosters go on
about how Twitter is better than the news because it's "real time." How much
of an advantage is being "real-time" if you aren't also reliable?

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grandalf
I have to admit that I'm a bit cynical about the accuracy of any of the
tweets. How do we know for use that the tweets are actually coming from Iran?

My guess is that most are not, and that they are being written by people who
are trying to sway public opinion.

~~~
Maktab
Do you have any evidence to back up this hunch, or is this just the usual sort
of unreasoned paranoia that sees third-party involvement behind any action
against a disliked government?

The protests are real; the photos and video that have emerged so far are proof
of that. And they have unfolded in a manner that's entirely plausible and did
not require the involvement of non-Iranian third parties to get to the point
they're at now. Until any plausible evidence emerges that significant numbers
of tweets were forgeries, I think the more reasonable position to take is to
assume they're real and Iranian. Of course, this does not mean they should be
automatically believed, as like all low-level eyewitness accounts they are
necessarily subject to inaccurate rumours, flawed conclusions, personal biases
and all the rest, but the mere fact that many of these tweets are inaccurate
does not imply that they weren't posted in Iran and it does not diminish their
value in letting the rest of us know what it's like for ordinary people at
street level in Iran's cities.

~~~
grandalf
How do we even know they are accurate? Twitter seems like a great propaganda
tool.

Sorry after 8 years of Bush administration meddling in Iran (and decades of US
meddling prior) why should we believe any of it. The people who died are just
sad pawns in someone else's struggle.

------
omarish
Wisdom of the crowd.

