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This article looks at the role, impact and response to the internet, new media and citizen journalism during the 2007 protests.\n\nIt starts by going over the history of burma and the junta and the events leading up to the 2007 protests. This protest was different than previous burmese protests due to the amount of information coming out. Cyberspace was flooded with grainy pictures and videos taken by burmese citizens,\n\nThe internet allowed people in Burma to send information and pictures out to show what was happening bringing a new type of political activism and global advocacy. The burmese protests were influenced greatly by this new media, but the protests still failed and many were killed.\n\nThe article talks about Yochai Benkler who argues the internet has opened possibilities even for those living under brutal regimes. Cheap cost and decentralisation is the main factors that are good about the internet in this situation.\n\nThe burmese media used to be free when under colonial rule. This free expression may have sparked the independence movement, but was then restricted when the army took over and restricted the media. Old media is easy to control by controling the sources (eg newspapers and TV stations). The internet is the new media model. BurmaNet, funded by the Soros foundation was one of the 1st news sites. Others followed, many based in thailand and with contacts to pro-democracy movements\n\nThe government stepped up its efforts to stop this content and prohibited the ownership of computers without approval. It also made its own propaganda websites. The 2007 protests show that even though the gov attempted to control the media the internet is uncontrollable and info will get out. Web 2.0 was also in full swing with citizen journalists uploading photos, video and blogging. The main news outlets were al using grainy amateur footage.\n\nDuring the protests the gov blocked the internet and cell phones sometimes. \n\nMuch of the blogs were outsite the co

"This past weekend, the horrific image of a young woman dying on camera in the midst of a protest in Iran turned into a rallying cry for many of those participating/following the events in Iran. In 40 seconds of grainy footage (shot on what appears to be the mobile phone of a passerby), we first see the wounded woman - now identified as Neda - as she falls to the floor into a pool of blood. Two men come to her aid and try to stem the bleeding from her chest. The person filming moves in closer and Neda turns towards the camera, seeming to fix her gaze on the lens pointed at her. A few seconds pass, the bleeding becomes more profuse, and Neda falls unconscious, passing away within moments. "

Wars have a way of reducing themselves to moments, single memories, tiny episodes. Here, pictures have a thousand-to-one advantage over words. The 10-year Vietnam War was summed up in four photographs: Associated Press photographer Eddie Adams captured the instant in 1968 when South Vietnamese Brig. Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan executed a Viet Cong prisoner on a Saigon street. Nick Ut snapped a picture of Kim Phuc, a Vietnamese girl, fleeing naked down a highway in Vietnam after a napalm attack in 1972. Ron Haeberle took a picture of the limp bodies of the My Lai massacre victims after they were shot in 1968. John Filo caught Mary Ann Vecchio screaming over the body of a fellow student slain by National Guardsmen during a war protest at Kent State University in Ohio in 1970. These photographs, it could be argued, tilted the whole balance of public opinion against the war. What occurred on the battlefield was rendered largely irrelevant by what occurred when certain photons massed themselves into images and rushed into the retinas and minds of the American public.

It's no secret that social media's played an important - maybe even historic - role in the Iran election protests that have swept the nation into discord and disarray. Many social media companies have made a contribution towards opening the flow of communication within and out of Iran, YouTube (YouTube) included. As we reported earlier this week, thousands of Iran-related videos are being uploaded to YouTube every day, revealing first-hand accounts of the crisis to the world. Some are incredible, some are eye-opening, and other shock you to your very core. We've included ten of these incredible videos, in a chronological order that helps provide context to the crisis in Iran. Be prepared, for these videos can evoke some very strong emotions:

"Recently, the "citizen photo agency" Demotix has had reason to celebrate. The site gained fame by selling front-page photos to the New York Times taken by Iranians who captured shots of protests after the disputed presidential election in Iran. Then came another seminal moment when the site got the only shot of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. in handcuffs when he was arrested. That photo was featured on CNN, CBS and NBC and in the Washington Post, Boston Globe and other papers, bringing in more than $4,000 for Demotix and the photographer, William B. Carter."

"Everybody likes to cite the Iranian protests as a great example of how the Internet and Social Media was able to bypass censorship and narrate a powerful, fast-shifting story to the world. But how much do we really know about what was happening online and how journalists outside of Iran connected to the Online information?"