Twitter, Facebook, and the Iranian Election

ABC’s Lara Setrakian Reports: In reporting out a piece for ABC News Digital we stumbled upon two surprising twitter accounts: one for Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and another for Fmr Prime Minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi running for president against Ahmedinejad in this, the Persian election year of 1388. While we’ve been cautioned that it’s difficult to beat an presidential incumbent in Iran, Ahmedinejad is facing his stiffest competition from Mousavi — a "soft-reformer" and political heir to former President Khatami.  Mousavi has made significant use of the internet and other technologies to mobilize his young, urban base (yes, he made a YouTube video). He is playing to a significant youth vote — 70% of Iran’s population is under 30 — and if he can overcome their deep voter apathy Mousavi will get a major boost on June 12. Another point on votes and technology: Iran lifted its ban on Facebook this February, giving way to a flood of new users in the Islamic Republic (Facebook rose to the 10th most popular site in that country of 70 million) Savy urbanites always had access, passing around software for proxy servers, but this was a new and widespread access.  Cynics say the incumbent hardliners unblocked Facebook to soften their image with young voters; or that Iran has now figured out how to monitor the site and so has allow free access. Khamenei’s Twitter posts are all in Persian. A friend and I worked out some translations, and they’re mostly his speeches and whereabouts of the past few weeks — meetings in Iran’s Kurdistan province, hiking in mountainous Sanandaj, etc.  Similar fare to Khamenei’s blog.