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transcript
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Emil Steiner December 6, 2010
David, Excalibur, Icarus: News Coverage of the Twitter Revolution as a Three-‐Act Myth Cycle
Summary
Tear gas and chaos filled the streets of Tehran last June.1 Oppressed, green-‐clad Iranians, protesting the
disputed re-‐election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, clashed with police in Facebook-‐coordinated
demonstrations while the world watched, not on television but on Twitter. Blogs at the Atlantic 2 and
Huffington Post3 chronicled the Tweets of young revolutionaries speaking truth to tyranny while
YouTube broadcasted videos of their martyrdom. News reporters found themselves in the midst of a
seismic, democratic shift thanks to new technologies which allowed anyone with a cell phone to become
a journalist. A brave new world of accessible information lay at our fingertips. Truth seemed only a click
away.4
At least that’s how a lot western media portrayed the “Twitter Revolution.” Since then scholars and
media analysts have largely downplayed and in some cases debunked the Revolution’s validity and
impact. That one would be hard pressed to find a news cycle absent of the word Twitter is seen by some
critics as a further indication of the demise of journalistic standards. Nonetheless, what happened was
memorable though its impact is still being assessed. This essay will attempt to add clarity to that
assessment by examining the coverage and criticism as a unified framework of narrative storytelling.
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Methodology and Mythology
The gallons of ink spilled covering the “Twitter Revolution” over the past 16 months can be roughly
divided into three categories: A) Reporting on the election and protests and how microblogging and
crowdsourcing tools facilitated both, B) Coverage and commentary about how those new technologies
could revolutionize not just nations but journalism, and C) Critical analysis of A and B.
As my research indicates, much of the writing in A and B used myth as a framework to give context to
what was happening, while C has mostly focused on the inaccuracies and missteps A and B fell prey to
by doing so within a rapidly accelerating news cycle caused by the “revolutionary” technology. Rather
than join that already noisy conversation, this essay will instead analyze all three categories as a social
phenomenon through the lens of narrative storytelling. Taken together, this essay argues that A, B, and
C form a narrative framework that can be applied in the analysis of past and future critical news events.
Through the lens of narrative storytelling, the framework’s three categories can be understood as acts in
a myth cycle, each dependent on the other and each with its own distinct archetypes that function
independently: A) David vs. Goliath, B) Excalibur C) Icarus.
While journalism and news can be viewed through many lenses, the value in analyzing critical incidents,
like this one, as narratives is akin to the value in reporting them that way.5 By creating a usable
framework based on shared stories this essay can be used to explain how the “Twitter Revolution” was
covered and analyzed. And though admittedly blunt, it can also be used to provoke questions about the
coverage of similar stories.
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Three Acts in Brief
David v. Goliath
During the run up to the Iran’s 10th presidential elections, western journalists reported that candidates,
particularly those running against incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, used social networking
tools to organize grass roots campaigning.6 After the disputed elections of June 12th, protests erupted
across Iran as supporters of opposition leader Mir-‐Hossein Mousavi alleged widespread fraud at the
ballots. The western press also reported that protesters were using Twitter and Facebook to organize
demonstrations.7 That storyline became rapidly accepted as the reality of what was happening on the
streets of Iran, and idea of a “Twitter Revolution” exploded across our shared consciousness.8
Excalibur’s Power
On June 16th, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei banished members of the press9 and news outlets
were forced to rely almost entirely on crowdsourcing technologies like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube
to gather firsthand accounts. During this critical incident10 the technology itself became as salient a
storyline as that of the opposition using it to fight oppression.11 Many in the press elevated the
technology to the status of a revolutionary weapon with which to fight tyranny and reform the
profession of journalism.12 Because of the instant news cycle that the technology created, the fact that it
was the most accessible source for information, its novelty and power skewed the marketplace of ideas
and, as was later argued, encouraged news outlets to overlook accuracy for immediacy.
Icarus Rhymes With Hubris
Once the fog of tear gas and hash tags cleared and media scholars began to examine the coverage, a
third storyline emerged. Academic publications and longer form analysis pieces became sharply critical
of the exuberance with which the media had used and portrayed the power of social networking and
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crowd sourcing technologies.13 While recognizing some utility, the reactionary tone of much of the Third
Act writings tamped down the significance of the “Twitter Revolution” with nearly as much alacrity as
the Second Act writings had overhyped it. Media critics proffered prudence in using the new
technologies while pessimistically predicting that those working within the ever-‐quickening news cycle
would predictably err again.14 Their demythologization fulfilled the archetype of Daedalus warning his
son Icarus about flying to close to the sun and perhaps the Gods punishing Icarus for his hubris.
Research
The three-‐act myth cycle presented here was developed after a comprehensive examination of the
global news coverage of the 10th Iranian presidential elections. As trusted providers of information, the
word choices journalists make affect readers’ interpretations of the news -‐-‐ the how and why.15
Examining news as both a story and a text,16 involved a systematic qualitative and quantitative analysis
of the word choices reporters and editors made, specifically in the pre and post election coverage. The
use of non-‐neutral words such as “David,” “Goliath,” “tyranny,” “hero,” “oppression/oppressive,” “evil,”
“dictator/dictatorship,” “repression/repressive,” “freedom,” “revolution,” “underdog,” and “courage”
was interpreted as an indication of a regression toward the David vs. Goliath narrative.
An examination of micro-‐blogging, crowdsourcing and social networking during the time before and
after the elections was also undertaken. This research examined word choices used to describe the role
of those technologies during the period from June 11th to June 17nd and the frequency with which such
terms as “Twitter/Tweet/tweeting/Facebook/social network/crowdsoucring/microbloging/sms
appeared in headlines and in articles. Additionally a comprehensive analysis of the opinions and editorial
commentary on the emerging technologies’ impact on elections and journalism was undertaken and a
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similar analysis was done of the scholarly writings about the coverage, from academic journals and trade
publications as well as policy papers and magazines.
The investigation and findings inspired the notion of a three-‐act myth cycle that provoked further
research into journalism theory and cultural anthropology. Writings on how myths and archetypes in
narrative story telling give readers a necessary context for understanding narrowed the scope of this
essay, while providing background for the cultural phenomenon of journalism during key moments
when the profession and service of journalism sometimes evolve. Codifying the three-‐act myth cycle
into a framework for analyzing critical incidents followed, as did the research, still ongoing, to apply it
retroactively to other critical incidents to understand if and to what extent it has historical context.
Interpreting “Critical Incidents” as Myth Narratives
Journalism’s roots are in storytelling, but they are not identical. Both seek to enlighten and inform,
though journalism has a stronger obligation to accuracy. Being “a mediated symbolic system, news does
not stand in an identical position in culture as say, oral tradition.”17 But like a proto-‐language there are
discernable traits of storytelling in journalism. “All writing, all narrative art depends upon dramatic unity,
bringing together plot, character, scene, method, and purpose,” writes James W. Carey. Journalists write
stories, but those stories are constrained by the impetus to convey, often through the limits of style and
convention, the who, what, where and when first.18
As Steve Barkin notes: “Storytellers make sense of the world. They organize phenomena into scenarios,
which imply that there are reasons for what has happened. Journalists compartmentalize human
activity.”19 However, there are, as Barkin points out, certain types of events where journalists push the
limits of their professional stylistic constraints. During news events where a cause-‐and-‐effect, just-‐the-‐
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facts attitude does not sufficiently explain what is happening, the primitive conventions of oral tradition
can find their way onto the broadsheets and news sites sometimes superseding conventions and
constraints.20 Such storytelling narratives, with heroes and villains, rely on archetypes for context,
tapping into our collective experience for recognizable patterns of behavior with predictable outcomes.
These news events are consistent with what George Gerbner referred to as “critical incidents”21 and
what Levi-‐Strauss called “hot moments.”22 Like the Kennedy Assignation, the first Gulf War and the
recent elections in Iran they are incidents during which the eyes of the world search for explanation of a
tumult. During such events the chaos creates an intense public thirst for context and historically the
press has been there to quell it. News is how the public finds order in chaos, but complicated stories can
be difficult to explain in the limits of an article and nuance can be even harder to fit into a sound bite.23
Further the immediacy of these incidents – the intensity of the thirst if you will – mandates drastic
measures. In response the press often applies narratives – popularly accepted storylines that need little
explanation – as a framework for telling the news.24
"Critical incidents,” Barbie Zelizer notes “are generally shaped by discourse about two features:
technology and archetypal figures." In the case of the Kennedy assignation, the television news was the
technology, in the case of the first Iraq War it was satellite feeds, and in the case of the Iranian elections
it was crowdsourcing. In addition journalists often use critical incidents as a way of redefining the craft –
the hows and whys of the profession.25 This creates a multi-‐dimensional dynamic. First news providers
are using new technologies and archetypes to make sense of the news and then media analysts attempt
to make sense of the use of archetypes and new technology’s impact on news coverage. But what if that
analysis is itself part of an overriding and interconnected narrative?
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In the commentary on the coverage of the Iranian elections scholars and critics, it could be argued,
fulfilled an archetype – that of Daedalus, Icarus’s father, warning against flying to close to the sun or the
Gods themselves castigating the hubris of eager reporters to embrace the new technology while
neglecting their responsibilities to professional standards. Therefore in applying this myth framework to
coverage of critical incidents it is necessary to also analyze the coverage of the coverage through the
lens of narrative storytelling. This is to look at news coverage as Bird & Dardenne suggest “both as a
body of work that is a continuing story of human activity, and as individual stories that contribute to
that continuing one.”26
Act One: David vs. Goliath
The narrative of David vs. Goliath has a villain and a hero. It is both universal and extremely appealing to
the American notion of independence.27 It was sown into the national identity at its birth, The War of
Independence, and in the subsequent messianic interpretations and recordings of that history. God
blessed America, she defeated her oppressive ruler England and created a new Jerusalem.28 Despite
America’s contemporary reputation as the world’s Super Power, the story of the underdog remains a
salient part of the American identity in culture, sport, and news coverage. Indeed the unexpected nature
of the weak overcoming the strong is a siren song that news conflict stories naturally gravitate toward.29
There are three essential elements of the narrative, (leaving aside God and faith for the purposes of this
essay): David, the weaker oppressed hero; Goliath, the powerful, oppressive villain; David’s sling, the
instrument with which he overcomes Goliath’s advantage. In the American Revolution, the “one if by
land, two if by sea” candles placed in the windows of patriots filled the role of sling.30
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The Iranian elections contained all three elements. The opposition supporters of Mir-‐Hossein Mousavi fit
the archetype of David, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the Goliath of the Iranian regime recognized
by the western world as oppressive, and cellphones (the handheld conduit through the oppressed cast
stones of truth via social networking tools like Twitter) as the sling.
Based on my examination of the reporting I have found that the combination created a natural and
perhaps inevitable gravitation by the western media toward using the narrative as a framework through
which to report and explain the complex events unfolding in Iran. As Ronald Reagan once put it:
"Technology will make it increasingly difficult for the state to control the information its people receive.
The Goliath of totalitarianism will be brought down by the David of the microchip.” Those prophetic
words were never more embraced by journalists as during the Twitter Revolution.
Choice Word Choices
The clearest proof of news organizations embracing the David vs. Goliath narrative is the direct
references to it in reportage. From May 1 to June 30, 2009, at least 29 English news articles used the
words “David” and “Goliath” in their coverage of Iran. Beyond the direct references, word choices in
stories reflect a more subtle embracing of the narrative. From May 1 to June 30, 200 news articles
contained the word “tyranny” at least once in stories involving Iran. Over that same period, 48
contained the word “underdog,” 215 contained the word “hero,” 303 contained the words
“oppression/oppressive,” 341 contained the word “courage,” 557 contained the word “evil,” 886
contained the words “repression/repressive,” 1,309 contained the words “dictator/dictatorship,” 2,197
contained the word “freedom,” and 3,617 contained the word “revolution.”
Beyond the quantitative analysis, a qualitative examination of the tone of the reporting during the week
of June 12th indicates an abdication of the convention of neutral news coverage.
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From the Washington Post: “Millions of Iranians take to the streets to defy a theocratic dictatorship
that, among its other finer qualities, is a self-‐declared enemy of America and the tolerance and liberties
it represents.”31
From the Evening Standard (London): “THE WEAKEST moment for a dictatorship, says de Tocqueville, is
when a bad regime tries to reform itself. That is when the weaknesses are most apparent, its
contradictions manifest. It is also when its leaders show their fear of the people. So the Iranian regime,
which only a few days ago was deriding opposition parties crying foul at the tampered election results
as mere "disappointed football fans", suddenly concedes the possibility of limited recounts to buy off
dissent it cannot control.”32
From the New York Times: “But for those who dreamed of a gentler Iran, Saturday was a day of
smoldering anger, crushed hopes and punctured illusions, from the streets of Tehran to the policy
centers of Western capitals. Iranians who hoped for a bit more freedom, a better managed economy
and a less reviled image in the world wavered between protest and despair on Saturday.”33
Interestingly in the same June 14 issue of the New York Times there was an unrelated article on A24
titled “Social Network, TV Network: Did You Tweet?” It wasn’t until the next day or so that Twitter
began to take over and the narrative shifted. Within the David and Goliath story, David slays Goliath
with the help of his sling. And while that primitive weapon remains forever tied to the biblical tale, David
goes on to rule Israel without it. This is not the case in the second narrative.
Act Two: Excalibur’s Power
The sword Excalibur is not just a prop in the legend of King Arthur, it is a character with its own plot arc
and magical powers. In the most famous version, (there are at least two versions of the legend), the
mighty sword begins its arc stuck in a stone and Merlin predicts that the person who can remove it will
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become king of Britain. Much like in the David and Goliath narrative, it is not the strongest person but
the seemingly weakest -‐-‐ a young boy named Arthur -‐-‐ who is worthy of the task. Anointed king of
Britain, Arthur uses Excalibur to protect and defend Britain from the forces of evil. So powerful was the
sword that on his death bed Arthur asked Sir Bedivere to throw Excalibur into a lake and so alluring was
its power that Bedivere had to be asked several times before he complied.34
Unlike David’s sling, Excalibur remained by Arthur’s side until the end. Its power was transferable and
without it he could not have banished the Saxons and killed evil monsters over the course of his reign, as
legend has it. So if the Paul Revere’s “one if by land two if by sea” candle warning is akin to David’s sling,
Excalibur is symbolic of America’s a-‐bomb circa 1945. Its power made Arthur supreme for a time, but
anyone who possessed it could take advantage of its power.
The comparison of the “Twitter Revolution” to Excalibur is twofold – much like the revolution itself.
There is the Twitter et al. (taken broadly to include Facebook, microblogging and crowdsourcing/social
networking technology) as a tool to rally dissidents in reform movements and the Twitter et al. that,
legend has it, revolutionized journalism. A comprehensive analysis of the news coverage of both aspects
indicates that the transition from Twitter et al. as a sling for the revolution in Iran to Excalibur for the
revolution of journalism began after Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei banished the foreign
press. In addition to examining the overall tone and content of the reporting, a quantative analysis of
the coverage was also conducted comparing the number and frequency of certain key words used in the
coverage.
In both folds, the arc of Twitter et. al. began the same. It was seen, perhaps as Excalibur was when it
was stuck in the stone, as a nuisance or an amusing distraction. In 2007 The Star Tribune characterized
the technology as “the most useless productivity-‐destruction mechanism the Internet has produced.”35
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Numerous recent articles celebrating Twitter, in fact, lead with a witty reference of how it’s not just for
posting what you had for lunch anymore.3637
As a tool for organizing political campaigns, Twitter came of age during the 2008 U.S. presidential
elections. In its 2008 year in review, The Baltimore Sun wrote that “Twitter was probably the biggest
new tool of the year, even if many people couldn't figure out the allure, or the business model, of micro-‐
blogging in 140 characters or fewer. The invention made a splash during the summer's political
conventions.”38
Like so many trends deemed alluring in America, Twitter and Facebook began taking off internationally
soon after. A microcosm of Twitter et al.’s role in the Iranian elections took place in Moldova during its
elections in April 2009.39 At first it was used by campaigners and then as tool to organize protesters
following alleged voter fraud. “Digital tools like Twitter, Facebook and SMS text messaging played a key
role in the massive youth protests that rocked the Communist government in the former Soviet republic
of Moldova.”40
The seed for the storyline was planted and ready to blossom as campaigning began for the 10th Iranian
Presidential elections, and journalists reported how grassroots opposition campaigns were forming
online. “The Internet played a major role as well, whether through well-‐known social-‐networking sites
such as Facebook and Twitter, or through large e-‐mail listservs such as 88camp (88 being the current
Iranian year), which boasted nearly four-‐hundred-‐thousand subscribers.”41 When the Iranian election
results became disputed and citizens took the streets, reporters wrote that social networking was being
used to organize the protests as it had in Moldova,42 a contention sharply disputed during Act Three of
this framework.43
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“Despite the government crackdown, Iranians used technology like Twitter and YouTube to take matters
into their own hands.”44 That Twitter had limited Farsi capability was overlooked. Rumor and conjecture
grew too hot not to report as the power of Excalibur was flexed by the masses.
“If you’ve been following other blogs or Twitter, the evidence for a stolen election in Iran is pretty good
right about now… the Interior Ministry, appear to have lost control of the information they were trying
to contain, apparently that Mousavi may actually have won the election. Rumors are spreading that the
members of the opposition, Mir-‐Hossein Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi, and even former president
Mohammad Khatami have all been arrested. Protesters were still on the streets as late as an hour ago
according to Twitter user mohamadreza, who has been making excellent first hand updates about the
situation in Tehran.”45
Shifting Storyline
Twitter et al.’s Cinderella like transformation from sling to Excalibur was nearly complete. The critical
incident which shifted the story from act one to act two took place near the stroke of midnight June 15th
when foreign correspondents were banished by Iranian authorities. Journalists were now forced to rely
on scarcely verifiable crowdsourcing for their on the ground coverage. Twitter “enabled the powerless
to survive a brutal crackdown and information blackout by the ruling authorities,” wrote Marc Ambinder
in the Atlantic.46
Much as major news sites had turned to CNN as the lone, up to the minute news source during the first
Gulf War, 47 now CNN and other major news organizations were relying on Twitter et al.’s up to the
minute photos videos and reports from the streets of Tehran. By doing so it appeared, to some
journalists, that journalism itself was undergoing a revolution. “Twitter feed #iranelection has replaced
CNN as the go-‐to place for breaking news about this dramatic, heart-‐wrenching story (see #cnnfail).”48
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A Washington Times commentary aptly titled, “Age of Twitter vs. Tyranny – An Army of Davids take on
an Ayatollah Goliath” extolled that “Twitter is in the vanguard of an army of cybernauts whose speedy
steeds are propelling both democratic and authoritarian governments through a period of social change
more profound than anything we have experienced in 5,000 years of recorded history… the new
limitless ability to listen and respond is not only impacting the exchange of ideas on a global scale; it is
impacting national security. Iran is the lodestar.”49
50
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Commentary in the Denver Post also aptly describes the shifting storyline: “What's so compelling about
the Iran story is, of course, where it's happening and when it's happening and also the role of new
technology in bringing the story to the rest of the world.”51 The new technology no longer just a part of
the story it was becoming a story itself.
Exemplifying Exalibur’s arc, America, a national Catholic weekly magazine, heralded Twitter’s
transformation from “a service that once conveyed the merely trivial” to a powerful tool that “has
played, and may continue to play, a vital role in global liberation.”52
On June 17th AFP declared: “Twitter Comes of Age.”53 That date is also a milestone in the quantitative
analysis of word choices – it was when Twitter et. al. was mentioned in more articles than “Iran.” That
rise began in the week following the election, when an exponential increase in the number of headlines
containing the words “Twitter or Tweet or tweeting or Facebook or social network or crowdsoucring or
microbloging or sms” occurred. From June 13 to June 17 the number of headlines containing those
keywords jumped from 149 to 319. Over that same period the number of articles mentioning those
keywords soared from 821 articles to 1,759. These numbers clearly indicate that Twitter et. al. was
becoming a bigger story, but what of Iran? On June 13, 309 articles had Iran in the headline and by June
17, 355 contained the word. Similarly 846 articles contained the word “Iran” on June 13 and 1,659
articles did on June 17.
These numbers do not show that Twitter et al. had replaced Iran as the storyline but they do indicate
that both storylines grew in popularity together. What should be noted is that the story was originally
about Iran. The Excalibur narrative was birthed from the sling of David in the first narrative but had, in
less than a week become its own major storyline. By the 17th the quantity and timbre of the writing
indicate that the “revolutionary” technology was at least as popular a storyline as that of the protesters
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using it. David Aldridge, my former colleague at the Washington Post, even posted on Facebook on June
17 the he “hopes the dinosaurs still in my business that think that YouTube, Twitter and blogs are
ruining "journalism" see how the Iranian protests are being disseminated to the world. This revolution
will not be televised...it will be Tweeted.”
In a June 18 piece titled “Twitter 1, CNN 0” the Economist gave a measured but telling analysis, stating
“[t]he winner of the Iranian protests was neither old media nor new media, but a hybrid of the two.”
What is curious though, is that neither opposition protestors nor Iran’s regime were in the running for
winner of the Iranian protests. Regardless of the Economist’s scorecard, the piece is yet another
indication that the focus of media coverage had shifted from a battle between protestors and the
regime to a tale about a revolution in journalism.54 “It all adds up to a story that’s being covered like
none before it,” opined Marisa Guthrie in Broadcast &Cable.55
In the hours and days during which the Excalibur narrative grew in popularity, older news media -‐-‐
television, radio, newspaper -‐-‐ embraced the new technology, creating and enhancing their Twitter
accounts and Facebook presences. Journalists, whose fingers already ached from the all the extra
blogging, were told they needed to start Tweeting as well. Politicians, celebrities, and athletes
incorporated social microblogging into their PR strategies and news organizations responded by
aggregating and writing about the abundance of content spewing from Twitterspace.56
Excalibur’s power to democratize news and perhaps the world felt real, but there was a problem. Not
everyone was using Twitter for good, and people were starting to take notice. From here a shift in the
narrative framework led to Act Three though there was certainly foreshadowing prior. A couple
humorous indicators from England stand out:
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First the ominous hyperbole found in the British trade publication Marketing, in which Andrew
Walmsey, founder of i-‐level media, wrote that what Twitter can do for marketers is what it’s doing for
the State Department, giving us a direct connection to what real people are saying about the things that
matter.57 Then there was the apology, on June 24 from a British furniture store after keywords relating
to the Iranian unrest appeared in Twitter ads offering coupons for the store. These are exactly the kind
of bombastic tales that often indicate the media is flying too close to the sun and is too exuberant to
care.
Act Three: Icarus Rhymes with Hubris
In Greek and later Roman mythology the story of Icarus serves as cautionary tale about the dangers of
hubris and flights of fancy. According to legend, Icarus was the son of Daedalus, an Athenian craftsman
who fashioned wings for his son made of feathers and wax so that they might escape from Crete.
Despite his father’s warnings about not flying too close to the sun, Icarus became giddy soon after
takeoff soaring higher and higher. Predictably, the sun melted the wax of his wings and the feathers fell
off, leaving Icarus flapping only his arms. Being a mere mortal human, he fell back to earth, crashing into
the sea.58
Within the context of the Twitter Revolution myth cycle, Icarus’s tale is reflected in the criticism by
scholars and media analysts of the mainstream media’s reporting (Act One: David vs. Goliath) and it’s
aggrandizement of the new technology (Act Two: Excalibur’s Power). For the purposes of this
framework, the wings are symbolic of Twitter et al., Icarus of the press, and Daedalus of the media
critics. Analysis of the writings in journals, trade publications, and broader commentary reflects a close
similarity to the original myth, in that Twitter et al. was not directly faulted but its reckless use by the
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media was. The Third Act of the myth cycle at times lauds the new technology but proffers caution that
it is not a panacea but instead a double-‐edged sword. This serves as the familiar parental lesson that
there are no shortcuts around hard work.
Daedalus (the journal, not the father of Icarus) laments that the digital revolution “brought liberty and
plenty to the system of free expression, and yet at the same time it subverted journalistic discipline and
the fragile sense of order offered by the mosaic of the newspaper page.”59
Chastising the overemphasis during Act One, scholar Babak Rahimi states that it was “because of this
narrow prism that the role of new technologies as a medium of communication for the protest
movement was somewhat exaggerated.”60 Or, as Zelizer put it: “Good stories often come at the expense
of good journalism.”
“Ironically, the main entity responsible for this kind of media production of knowledge was the Islamic
Republic itself, which by limiting access created the conditions for the Western media to create a
narrative of the crisis that haunts the hardliners in power to this day. But while they gave such coverage
as there was more impact, the new media sources did nothing for its sophistication.” Even the
archetypes in the David and Goliath Act may have been inaccurately portrayed in the western media’s
hurry to make sense of the nuance. As Babak points out the election in Iran was not so much about
secular urbanites fighting rural religious hardliners but in fact an internal religious struggle by the
opposition who opposed the secular corruption of the Ayatollah. “That’s the story that the Western
media are going to have to catch up to.” 61
Evgeny Morozov, a Belarusian journalist and Fellow at the Open Society Institute, has an even harsher
review of the Excalibur Act. “The impact of Twitter as an organizational tool or rallying cry for Iranian
revolutionaries has been grossly overstated,” he writes. “There were fewer than 20,000 Twitter users in
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Iran before the protests started. And while that number increased exponentially during the protests, the
spike is most likely the result of a concerted effort of foreign supporters to change their Twitter
locations to Tehran, Iran, to mask the real Iranian Twitter users who were feeding information to the
outside world.” Nonetheless during “the first days after the protests, it was hard to find a
television network or a newspaper (never mind the blogs) that didn’t run a feature or an
editorial extolling the role of Twitter in fomenting and publicizing the Iranian protests.”62
As to a journalistic revolution, technology commentator Stephen Cass is skeptical. “Some enthusiasts
believe that such media will render traditional news outlets obsolete” however MSM sites “still draw
hundreds of millions of visitors each month (see "Convergence Is King," p. 66). In large part this is
because media organizations assign stories to journalists -‐-‐ who should be better informed and more
articulate than the average blogger… which rely heavily on reputation to distinguish themselves in the
market, are also accountable in a way that often anonymous citizen journalists are not.”63
Moreover, the giddiness for the new technology allegedly caused some journalists to turn their back on
their profession. “The Iran protest story was different because amateur content took center stage,”
writes Barb Palser, director of digital media for McGraw-‐Hill Broadcasting Co. “Many news
organizations-‐-‐particularly broadcasters, who rely on photos and video-‐-‐were forced to use unverified
user content or nothing at all. In a situation as opaque and politically charged as this one, that choice
raises some questions.”64
#WhaleorTale?
This line of castigation by scholars and critics implies that news organizations were not merely lazy or
negligent in putting immediacy ahead of accuracy but in fact reckless. They directly disobeyed their
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training, flying toward the sun with little regard for the profession’s well being. Within the narrative
framework, western media first assumed the archetype of David and Goliath because it was an easy way
to tell a complex story. Through this simplification it neglected to investigate the extent to which David
was using his sling. Then, when the sling became the media’s only source of information, writers and
editors aggrandized its role further, growing the Excalibur to such a vaulted status that the U.S. State
Department gave Twitter an HT. This further inflamed Iranian leaders who condemned Facebook and
Twitter for waging a “psychological and propaganda war” against Iran.65 In 2009, Khamenei compared
crowdsourcing to a nuclear bomb. Now it appears he has joined the arms race having launched his own
Twitter page to compete with the opposition movement.66
Perhaps the Christian Science Monitor should retract their nomination of Twitter for the Nobel Peace
Prize?67 Further complicating the issue in the opinion of anthropologist, Michael Fischer is that
“[a]lthough the new social media have been crucial for the decentralized initial successes of the Green
Movement, it is not clear that the state monitoring and filtering efforts have not been equally
successful.”68
Indeed it seems that Daedalus has much to gripe about, but then again isn’t that his job? Media critics
exist to point out and reign in the irrational exuberance that sometimes takes overtakes journalists
especially during critical moments. Without that check the profession would ride roughshod and it is
therefore an implicit and necessary component of the analysis process and the overall narrative of
journalism.
Steiner Page 20
Three-‐Act Myth Cycle as a Trend Story
The “Twitter Revolution” is only the latest in a list of critical incidents, the latest of which might be the
Wikileaks dump. Certainly it shares similarities to the First Gulf War, when CNN’s coverage changed the
way we watched news.69 Additionally the Velvet Revolution (fax machines), the terrorist attacks of
September 11th (online news) and the Virginia Tech shooting (blogs and cellphones) were moments
when new technologies and a critical incident caused journalists to examine the conventions of the
profession. A deeper examination of their historical context is still necessary, but Act Three of the myth
cycle must be included as part of the framework for analyzing such revolutionary events.
Postscript
Like the coverage of the events surrounding the 10th Iranian election, this essay generalizes. The
assumptive nature of using narratives and archetypes distils and by so doing sacrifices detail for
portability. This essay does so in order to fashion a framework general enough to apply to other critical
incidents in the hopes of enhancing understanding and furthering discussion. If that goal has been met,
then the sacrifice of detail is not only relevant to the thesis but justified for its future application.
Steiner Page 21
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