Propaganda and Persuasion

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Propaganda and Persuasion

in Ukraine in 2004; protestors in Moldova used text-messaging, Facebook, and Twitter to rally supporters to protest against the communist leadership in 2009. Text-messages threatened activists in Belarus in 2006. When Myanmar sought to silence demonstrators in 2007, it switched off the coun try's Internet for six weeks. China's government has tried hard over the years to obliterate the memory of the huge student-led protest in Tiananmen Square that captivated the world on June 4, 1989. China blocked sites like YouTube to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Chen Guang, who was 17 in 1989, had been a soldier who was told to fire on the students. Twenty years later, he made a painting of the event. When Chinese galleries refused to exhibit his painting, he posted it on the Internet, but it was removed within hours. (E. Barry, 2009; Stelter & Stone, 2009). In Iran, the day after the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was announced on June 12, 2009, supporters of candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi contested the election, questioning its legitimacy. In the streets of Tehran thousands of people marched into a blockade of Basij militiamen armed with tear gas, water cannons, and clubs. Heavy media censorship made it impossible to see what happened. BBC and Newsweek journalists were ousted, and remaining foreign journalists were warned not to go to the demonstrations. Iran TV broadcast pro-Ahmadinejad demonstrations. Some protesters were arrested, but others used cell-phone cameras to provide images of brutal police tactics on social-networking sites, including Twitter, while text-messages described what was happening. The government shut down several websites, including Twitter and Facebook, and cell-phone services. A cell-phone video of the shooting of Neda Agha Soltan, a bystander, was e-mailed to the Voice of America and British newspapers. It then spread to Facebook and CNN (Baum, 2009; Mostaghim, 2009). According to several current and former U.S. and European security officials, the Iranian government cannot black out the opposition even though it has tried various stratagems to control cyberspace and cell-phone traffic. For example, a government operation set up Twitter accounts to spread disinformation and find dissidents, but a blog named "Network Culture" has posted detailed guidance on how to fool it (Hosenball, 2009). More recently, the Iranian government issued a ban on any news related to the leaders of the protest movement against President Ahmadinejad. The editors of all domestic newspapers and news agencies in Iran have been ordered to refrain from publishing the names, photographs, and statements of the defeated presidential candidates, Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi, as well as former President Mohammad Khatami, because of "probable negative influence" (Yong & Worth, 2010).