As the world watches the ongoing political turmoil in Iran through the lens of Twitter (see my analysis piece
here and other National coverage
here and
here), it is interesting to find out how exactly the popular communication tool is being used in the country.
Statistics and an explanation to what that funky graphic is after the jump.
Sysomos, a Canadian-based
software company, has developed a tool to track and trace Twitter users
and what they are saying. They recently
posted an article on their blog analysing what Iranian Twitter users are doing following the country's election results.
The
company found that Iran boasts a total of 19,235 Twitter users,
compared with 8,654 in mid-May, up a whopping 122 per cent. Sysomos has
also determined that Iran's Twitter growth has risen strongly this
year, seemingly inline with Twitter's worldwide growth rate. Given the interest in the election, another blogger determined that Iranian Twitter messages are being
"re-tweeted" or forwarded an average of 57.8 times.
However,
it is what Iranian Twitter users were saying which may be the most
interesting part of Sysomos' findings. From their blog:
On June 11, there was a lot of conversation about presidential
candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi with the strongest association to "Iran",
"freedom", "Iran" and "vote". (see the above graphic)
On June 19, the major conversations coming from Iranian Twitter
users involved the keywords "Iran", which had the strongest links to
"Mousavi", "Tehran" and "Protest". This reflects the protests taking
place in Tehran by Mousavi's supporters.
...
On June 19, 40.3% Tweets about the election came from outside Iran
as the media and blog coverage about the protests in Tehran attracted
global attention. Meanwhile, the percentage of Tweets from Iran fell to
23.8%, while 35.7% of users did not provide a location. The lower
percentage of Tweets from Iran could also could be due to reports the
Iranian government is blocking access to the Internet and Twitter.
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