12th August 2024: digital purchasing is currently unavailable on Cambridge Core. Due to recent technical disruption affecting our publishing operation, we are experiencing some delays to publication. We are working hard to restore services as soon as possible and apologise for the inconvenience. For further updates please visit our website: https://www.cambridge.org/news-and-insights/technical-incident
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 April 2015
A year and a half after the Iranian uprising in 2009, unprecedented popular uprisings in several Arab countries provided some of the most evocative moments of power meeting its opposite, in decisive and surprising ways. In a matter of weeks, powerful hereditary/republican regimes in the region, including in Tunisia and Egypt, crumbled under relentless pressure and opposition from highly mediated “street politics.” The uprising and revolts that shook Iran in the aftermath of the 2009 electoral coup, and the revolts in Tunisia and Egypt that toppled the governments in these countries in twenty-eight and eighteen days, respectively, had three significant similarities. First, the Arab revolutions, like the 2009 uprising in Iran, were, in the first place, revolts against dictatorship and in direct opposition to the ruling regimes. These uprisings, like many such movements against despotism, were also marked with demonstrations and the visible participation of young people. Second, all three happened at a time in which, unlike 1979 (the time of the Iranian Revolution), the world was not divided into two camps, but rather was confronted with US hegemony and globalization of financial capital. And finally, they all happened at a time when advances in communication technologies, and in particular the Internet, have allowed for a much faster circulation and dissemination of information—hence the constant association of these revolts with Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and so forth.
1 Williams, Raymond, Television: Technology and Cultural Form (London: Fontana, 1974), 134–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
2 Headrick, Daniel, “The Tools of Imperialism: Technology and the Expansion of European Colonial Empires in the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of Modern History 51 (1979): 231–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 Ibid., 256.
4 Winseck, Dwayne and Pike, Robert, Communication and Empire: Media, Markets and Globalization, 1860–1930 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
5 Ben Rhodes, “On Nowruz, President Obama Speaks to the Iranian People,” The White House Blog, 20 March 2013, accessed 10 January 2015, http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/03/20/nowruz-president-obama-speaks-iranian-people.
6 For an informative and relevant critique of a well-known US intervention in Iran, that is, the CIA coup against Mosaddeq in 1953, see Gasiorowski, Mark J., “The Causes of Iran's 1953 Coup: A Critique of Darioush Bayandor's Iran and the CIA,” Iranian Studies 45 (2012): 669–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
7 Jay Solomon, “U.S. Shifts Iran Focus to Support Opposition,” The Wall Street Journal, 9 January 2010, accessed 10 January 2015, http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB126300060937222569.
8 For a trenchant critique of the US attempt and the complicity of some Iranian actors, see Hamid Dabashi, “Fifth Column of the Postmodern Kind,” Al Jazeera, 21 November 2011, accessed 10 January 2015, http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/11/20111120132050412430.html.
9 Pollack, Kenneth and Takeyh, Ray, “Doubling Down on Iran,” The Washington Quarterly 34 (2011): 7–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
10 Ibid., 16.
11 For problems associated with VoA, see VOA PNN Watchdog, accessed 10 January 2015, http://www.voapnnwatchdog.com/; and for reports of financial irregularity associated with the National Iranian American Council, see National Endowment for Democracy, 24 April 2010, accessed 10 January 2015, http://www.iranian-americans.com/docs/NedReport.pdf.
12 Pollack, Kenneth and Takeyh, Ray, “Doubling Down on Iran,” The Washington Quarterly 34 (2011): 17CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid., 20.
15 “War in the Fifth Domain: Are the Mouse and Keyboard the New Weapons of Conflict,” The Economist, 1 July 2010, accessed 10 January 2015, http://www.economist.com/node/16478792.
16 Ibid.
17 David Alexander, “Pentagon to Treat Cyberspace as ‘Operational Domain,’” 14 July 2011, accessed 10 January 2015, http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/14/us-usa-defense-cybersecurity-idUSTRE76D5FA20110714.
18 Shakhsari, Sima, “Weblogistan Goes to War: Representational Practices, Gendered Soldiers and Neoliberal Entrepreneurship in Diaspora,” Feminist Review 99 (2011): 7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
19 Ibid., 11.
20 Schiller, Dan, “Power Under Pressure: Digital Capitalism In Crisis,” International Journal of Communication 5 (2011): 932Google Scholar.
21 Ghonim, Wael, Revolution 2.0: The Power of the People is Greater than the People in Power (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012)Google Scholar; Saleh, Ahmad and Wahab, Nadine, “Interview with Administrators of Facebook's ‘I Am Khaled Said’ Page,” Middle East Law and Governance 3 (2011): 238–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
22 Ibid., 243.
