Iran's internet-savvy youth sidestep the regime
The Islamic Republic is fully aware of online social networking's potential to challenge the regime's narrative. The regime is also certainly studying the uprisings that took place in Serbia, the Ukraine, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and Moldova. The most recent election related protest in Moldova, known as the "Twitter Revolution" because of that site's role in coordinating demonstrations, probably generates the most important lesson on how to disrupt such uprisings: a crowd without a coordinated message soon becomes an unruly, dispirited and discredited crowd. In keeping with this lesson, the regime shut down internet and cell phone service when the protests started, making it much more difficult to access social networking sites and news sources not controlled by the government. The Iranian state is well practiced in such censorship. It had already interrupted access to Facebook in the days leading up to the election and the judiciary blocks approximately 1,000 web sites per month.
However, the country's draconian internet filtering is no match for the one-third of Iranians between the ages of 15 and 29 who are interconnected and politicised by virtual social networks. At the very least, tech-savvy young Iranians – Mousavi's primary voting bloc – have grown accustomed to circumventing the regime's relentless effort to stifle their freedom of expression and remain somewhat well informed.
