The Power of the Public Voice

Although there seems to be many instances in the book that mention the impact that affluencers had on Twitter’s success, people may also want to point out that it may not be solely the celebrity affluencers that led to Twitter’s success, it was also the use of Twitter by average civilians overseas in order to help the mobilization of protesters when it came to political affairs. In the book, in mentions that in June of 2009 there was an unusual spike in Twitter activity in Iran following the Iranian Presidential election. This was because Iranian citizens had suspected that the votes were rigged so they joined Twitter to voice their disapproval and to mobilize the protesters. According to Bilton (2013), during this time “Iran-related hashtags became the top trending topics on Twitter” (p. 207).

However once again, this claim can be backed up by a chart. In June of 2009, almost 10% of all new Twitter profiles were made in Iran.

People may have this opinion about Twitter’s success because this is not the only use of Twitter across the seas that has been used to bring average citizens together for a political cause. Twitter has also been heavily used in Cairo, Egypt in order for average citizens to voice their political opinions and protest the Egyptian government. One way in which Twitter is used in this way is in an event called “Tweet Up” in which the citizens of Egypt gather together and send in tweets under the hashtag #tweetnadwa that according to Srinivasan (2013), “reflect questions, comments, and thoughts related to the session…and celebrate the speakers, who are seen as brave revolutionaries.” (p. 53) Twitter is also utilized on the streets in Cairo where people were protesting the Egyptian government all while tweeting live updates of the protests in order to pass on information to other people about what was happening on the front line.

Although there is no mention of there being any significant spike in new Twitter users during the protests of the Iranian Presidential election, this can help generate the idea that Twitter gained a substantial amount followers overseas for uses of political activism because Twitter is one of the few mass communication tools that they have.