Berkman Luncheon Series >

nov
24
2009

#iranelection: The digital media response to the 2009 Iranian election

Cameran Ashraf, Adjunct Faculty member in the Department of Geography and Anthropology at California State University, Pomona & Brett Solomon, recently Campaign Director at Avaaz.org and Executive Director at GetUp.org.au

Tuesday, November 24, 12:30 pm
Berkman Center, 23 Everett Street, second floor
RSVP required for those attending in person (rsvp@cyber.law.harvard.edu)
This event will be webcast live at 12:30 pm ET and archived on our site shortly after.

The ability of social and digital media to play a crucial role in helping mass social movements coordinate and communicate effectively has been highlighted by the recent post-election unrest in Iran.  Due to the borderless nature of digital communications, the resources available to many activists can now be global in scale and supported by virtually instantaneous communication.  Some governments have taken notice of this borderless nature and the potential threat it poses.   To limit communications within and with the outside world they have erected their own border in the form of firewalls, monitoring mechanisms and internet filtering systems.

With Iran as a case study, this presentation will explore the role new communication technologies are playing in the post-election unrest, how people outside of Iran are helping through digital media, and the Iranian government's efforts at maintaining its information border.

Working with existing projects and movements in the field, a new ongoing movement for digital freedom is forming (accessnow.org), rallying digital activists and ordinary online citizens around the world, to assist political freedom movements and civil society who are being shut out from their rights to information, political expression and assembly.

About Cameran & Brett

Cameran Ashraf is an Adjunct Faculty member in the Department of Geography and Anthropology at California State University, Pomona. In 2009, he was awarded his M. A. in Geography from California State University, Fullerton.  He is currently applying to Ph.D. programs in Geography to study the intersection of the geographies of information, social movements and politics, using Iran's recent post-election unrest as a case study. An American Iranian, Cameran helped coordinate a network of technologists and digital activists who rallied together in the immediate aftermath of the Iranian election.

He will be joined by Brett Solomon, who was most recently Campaign Director at Avaaz.org, a global online citizen's movement of 3.6 million members and Executive Director at GetUp.org.au, Australia's largest online political organization. Brett is
co-founding accessnow.org with Cameran and two others who will be at the presentation.