Over the last few weeks many have been keeping a close eye on Iran. If you have no idea what I'm talking about (where have you been?) you can read about it all here. The situation is still unfolding.
Most of the first reports of violence and protest came from Twitter. Apparently the platform has been so instrumental that the U.S. State Department urged Twitter to postpone a scheduled network upgrade that would briefly have put the service offline.
"...events in Iran were tied directly to the growing significance of Twitter as an important communication and information network." More here.
The stream of mentions coming from twitter was, and continues to be, so large that it sometimes feels like you are trying to drink from a fire hose. Below are some numbers and graphs that should make the enormity of this whole event quite apparent. Click here to see the constant stream of Tweets that are still pouring in.
Numbers on #tags related to the crisis - Information from www.wthashtag.com
#iran
In the last 7 days:
- 8,694 tweets
- 4,953 contributors
- 1,242.0 tweets per day
- 20.1% are retweets
- 47.0% have multiple hashtags
- 6.5% come from "The Top 10"
#iranelection
In the last 7 days:
- 549,366 tweets
- 73,168 contributors
- 78,480.9 tweets per day
- 18.9% are retweets
- 37.5% have multiple hashtags
- 1.7% come from "The Top 10"
#neda [#neda refers to Neda Soltani]
In the last 7 days:
- 9,572 tweets
- 4,823 contributors
- 1,367.4 tweets per day
- 17.0% are retweets
- 53.8% have multiple hashtags
- 5.0% come from "The Top 10"
#gr88 [ #gr88 is a contraction of "Green Revolution 1388", 1388 being the Iranian calendar year when the election was held.]
In the last 7 days:
- 16,408 tweets
- 4,322 contributors
- 2,344.0 tweets per day
- 22.5% are retweets
- 84.2% have multiple hashtags
- 6.6% come from "The Top 10"
#tehran
In the last 7 days:
- 2,644 tweets
- 1,372 contributors
- 377.7 tweets per day
- 15.4% are retweets
- 73.8% have multiple hashtags
- 10.2% come from "The Top 10"
Iran Twitter Users - information from Sysomos social media tracking
- Twitter users in Iran Currently - 19,235
- Twitter users in Iran May - 8,654
Twitter accounts were created over the past 15 months - as you can see from the chart below, the number of Twitter users in Iran has grown strongly in 2009 with the most active months being March and June when 9.81% and 9.93% of all Twitter accounts were created respectively.
Tweets using #Iranelection.
On June 11, 51.3% of all these Tweets came from Iran, while 27% came outside the country, and 21.6% of Tweets did not include a location.
On June 19, 40.3% Tweets about the election came from outside Iran as the media and blog coverage about the protests in Tehran attracted global attention. Meanwhile, the percentage of Tweets from Iran fell to 23.8%, while 35.7% of users did not provide a location.
Majour trending topics on Twitter - Information from Twist
Iran Elections vs Iran Protest - interesting to note that you can see when the elections were happening (right at the beginning in red) and the protests that followed afterwards (in blue).
While numbers are already out of date, the tweets keep rolling in at a rapid pace, the above clearly demonstrates that Twitter is being used on the ground to organise and by the rest of the world to report. The Iranian government has reportedly been trying to censor some of this communication, but clearly people are finding ways around it. I think that it's great there is so much information out there about what’s happening in Iran.
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