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I've overdone this metaphor, but I really do see the panoply of sources we have about Iran as an intelligence service to the masses.

"Study finds political parties use Twitter differently, but says Democrats' messages are more honest.

From 2004, this interview goes into the mission of meetup and it's role in '04 politics.

Gladwell adds a contrary voice to the idea that social media can play a role in political activism.

One of many good reactions to Gladwell's essay on Twitter, social media and political action. (Link to Gladwell essay is inside this post.)

NYU professor and Internet thinker Clay Shirky gave a talk Tuesday at the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, our friends just on the other side of Harvard Square. His subject was the future of accountability journalism in a world of declining newspapers.

Scholars, advertisers and political activists see massive online social networks as a representation of social interactions that can be used to study the propagation of ideas, social bond dynamics and viral marketing, among others. But the linked structures of social networks do not reveal actual interactions among people. Scarcity of attention and the daily rhythms of life and work makes people default to interacting with those few that matter and that reciprocate their attention. A study of social interactions within Twitter reveals that the driver of usage is a sparse and hidden network of connections underlying the "declared" set of friends and followers.

Recent Ted Talk from Clay Shirky presented at the Ted@State conference. Description from the site:\n\nWhile news from Iran streams to the world, Clay Shirky shows how Facebook, Twitter and TXTs help citizens in repressive regimes to report on real news, bypassing censors (however briefly). The end of top-down control of news is changing the nature of politics.

Contrasting the styles of Obama and McCain, and debating what the contrasts mean.

discusses Facebook's use in organizing protests, when it works and when it doesn't.

From the site: The new head of MI6, Sir John Sawers, is at the centre of a security breach after his wife published family holiday photographs and other personal details on the Facebook website.

"Does the label Twitter Revolution, which has been slapped on the two most recent events, oversell the technology?"

"Iranians are blogging, posting to Facebook and, most visibly, coordinating their protests on Twitter, the messaging service. Their activity has increased, not decreased, since the presidential elections on Friday and ensuing attempts by the government to restrict or censor their online communications."

Wall Street Journal's take on the #cnnfail event.

"When thousands of Iranian citizens flooded the streets to protest the controversial results of last Friday's presidential election, news viewers in the U.S. rushed to Twitter to protest what they saw as a lack of coverage of Iran on CNN."

special coverage by Global voices of the Iranian election

Christian Crumlish describes the themes in his book, "the Power of Many," a 2004 look at social web topics. Of particular interest are his thoughts on the use of the Web and social media in the Dean Campaign of 2004.

Open source software for connecting individuals, used often for activism and connecting stories in the wake of crisis.

A recent analysis of Twitter content found that local governments in Virginia are mainly ignoring the popular microblogging website. The research study showed that only 17% of county, city and town governments had Twitter accounts. Tweets averaged at around one per day, and only five of the accounts had more than 1000 followers.

Great series on of blog posts on the use of social media in the 2010 elections. I used these as assignments in my social media class. See the post on the Tea Party in particular.