LINCOLN, Neb. — Since the June 12 election in Iran, loudly decried as fraudulent, that delivered an overwhelming victory for incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the protests have continued despite the government’s best efforts to squelch them. These efforts include tight new restrictions on journalists, including bans on photographing or filming the protest marches.The Los Angeles Times reported June 21 that at least 24 journalists have been arrested and more have had their credentials revoked or been told to leave the country entirely.Despite this crackdown, information about the protests continues to flow both within Iran and throughout the world, thanks in large part to what the media is calling “citizen journalists.”These are ordinary men and women equipped with computers and digital cameras and video recorders, often just the limited kind that come standard in most mobile phones. They are using the Internet, including such well-known sites as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr to get the word out.Iranian authorities have been doing their best to block access to such sites, but for every roadblock they throw up, computer techs the world over find a way around. Iran has tried to restrict access to social networking sites such as Twitter, but by using proxies, friendly networked computers worldwide, citizens can send updates without ever logging on to the blocked site. The U.S. State Department even requested that Twitter delay a scheduled maintenance shutdown, which would have occurred in the middle of the night at their San Francisco headquarters, in order to prevent a service interruption in Tehran.Some say the influence of such sites in the current protests is being overhyped. That may be true, but the courage of the citizen journalists using whatever means they can to keep the information flowing, both within Iran and without, cannot be doubted. We salute the brave people who are working to ensure that what is happening in Iran now will never be swept under the rug.Other totalitarian regimes, some much more autocratic than Iran, are no doubt quaking in their boots over the possibility of Iran’s situation being emulated in their countries.This may not be as simple as it sounds. Two-thirds of Iran’s population is younger than 30, they are tech-savvy, and cell phone and Internet usage is widespread.Amongst other things, this mean that a government’s inability to censor its citizens is only going to grow over time as this new generation comes into its own. They may feel forced to take more drastic measures to squelch dissent.We at the DN wish the very best to Iran’s citizen journalists and hope that this new harnessing of technology encourages governments to become more transparent, inclusive and accountable.
 
 
 
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