In my last post, which you can see here, I voiced doubt about the prominence of Twitter in MENA and the power of twitter as a social activism tool. However, I mentioned that the events revolving around Twitter during the Iranian Revolution in 2009 influenced the Iranian government to take firmer, "a more aggressive stance against free speech online." This situation got me thinking that perhaps the wonder of Twitter lies in its power to provoke governmental reaction to it or with it. I decided to explore this relationship in my final paper. What I concluded was that Twitter should not only be thought of as an "organizational tool" or a "social activism tool"; it can also function as a political tool wielded by governments. For example, the president of Iran uses Twitter actively-- well, not him per say, but his communications team hired to do his technological bidding.
President Hassan Rouhani uses Twitter as a diplomatic tool to appeal to Western audiences, particularly his English-only account. His tweets show support for women's rights, nuclear talks, and other forms of social freedom and disapproval of things such as economic sanctions, terrorism, and internet censorship. The last one might seem ironic, since Iranian citizens themselves do no have access to the same social media platform President Rouhani uses to promote free Internet access. President Rouhani responded to a tweet by Jack Corsey that asked if Iranian citizens could even read his tweets by saying “As I have told @camanpour, my efforts are geared to ensure my ppl will comfortably be able to access all info globally, as is their #right”
As this view suggests, President Rouhani is much more moderate than his predecessors, an image which is portrayed through his Twitter persona (self-written or not) and appeals to Western audiences.
In 2009, the American government made Twitter a political tool by asking it to delay its maintenance because of the influential role that it had in the Iranian protests. The Iranian government blocked all access to Twitter after the Twitter company advertised its role in the Iranian protests in Tehran and. In 5 years, Twitter has developed from a negative symbol of American political interference to a soft power diplomatic tool for promoting Iran-Western relations.