Translating a Movement

A few days ago, blogger Omid Memarian told me a story about the day after the June elections this year. As someone who knows pretty much all the major news agencies’ Iran correspondents, he called one of these colleagues and started talking animatedly about his analysis of the events. The journalist on the other end sounded confused. He listened but didn’t have much to say. 48 hours passed. It was only then that the journalist friend started to feel he had grasped what had happened after the elections, how, and why, and called Omid back. Omid said his own lack of time-lag was due to his close embedding in the political context of Iran. He explained that blogs like his own, which provided immediate English language commentary on the events in Iran from a real insider’s perspective, fulfilled a unique role in the wake of the election turmoil. They were the translators.

Many young second generation Iranians I’ve been talking to are aware of this need for translation. And English language blogs and websites are where several of them look to find it. But it happens offline too. Nothing exemplified this for me more than when we rounded up a bunch of friends, first and second generation students, and went to watch Khamenei’s fateful post-election speech together in Westwood. The running commentary of the meanings behind the “leader’s” words was for the benefit of those second generation kids who were deeply interested – enough to be there that night till 3 in the morning – but would have been lost without translation.

The political actions and stances of these second generation kids show awareness of their own distance from the complexities of the developments in Iran. But this doesn’t mean they’re passive. Student organizers I spoke with were clear about their support for and solidarity with the demonstrators of the green movement in Iran. But they drew the line at some of the “claiming of the green movement” going on, often among regime-change groups, who were commonly seen as rooted within an older generation of “exiles.” This generation gap seems to reflect a political gap, too (a point that recently got some attention in the LA Times); a shift towards a different type of political involvement among the second generation when it comes relating to the Iran’s green movement from here in LA.

Globalizing the movement is one of the impacts Mahasti Afshar attributes to social media and the Internet at large in today’s Iran. This important new facet of online communication seems to rely heavily on the quality of political, cultural, and of course linguistic translations that are being shared between Iranians in Iran and the diaspora, both online and offline. Yes, the Internet makes access to various perspectives very accessible. But are Twitter and Facebook updates directly from individuals inside Iran the main source of info for the second generation? Or are there still other barriers despite the Internet’s connectivity? It seems the important links between them are sources closely entrenched in both the Iranian and diaspora contexts - the virtual bureaus and journalistic blogs of those first (and some 1.5) generation individuals who have gained status as translators for this movement.

New Media Reflections

The questions about the camera-phone videos from inside Iran have come up in some conversations recently. I spoke to a young Iranian woman from East LA. She happened to be in Iran at the time of the post-election turmoil for work. She’s an artist. She said she was worried that the Twitter and Facebook circuits were showing a sensationalized version of the events. She didn’t feel like the videos she saw online when back in the US reflected her experience of the events when she was there. The little things like the everyday forms of resistance that people had been engaging in for a long time were being overlooked because they would not captivate audiences in a short video clip. She was concerned that this version of events would not help people outside Iran come to a more nuanced understanding of the complex political climate inside Iran that led to the recent unrest.

I think op-ed columnist for NYT, Roger Cohen, made a similar point when he came to LA to speak about writing from Iran after the elections. He said there’s substitute for being there. We should remember that what we’re seeing is not the full picture even if it’s vivid and current, he basically said. We shouldn’t see new media as replacing the role of quality, trained journalism. I think that’s what a lot of us learned, as we started to become more discerning about the sources and the content after acclimatizing to the initial shock of the developments. I have the impression that new kinds of media literacy had to emerge during that time. One female Iranian student I spoke to disagreed, though.

She already knew which sites to trust and which not to, she said. She talked on the phone to her relatives back in Iran, like many others here, and followed the news both on mainstream and other (online) media agencies. Despite the floods of Twitter messages of this summer, and the steady stream that is still flowing, those I talk with relied heavily - and still do - on journalism that fulfills conventional standards and methods of information verification and presentation… at least those who were, indeed, relying on such sources before the Facebook and Twitter booms hit, that is. Those who weren't... well, there will always be people like that, I guess.

Alternative Online Art Networks

Sociarts is an online forum for artists started up by Bita Shafipour, who came over to the US from Iran when she was 19 to study here, and is now a filmmaker. Bita told me she saw the role of the Internet as a means of preserving the quality of the arts; the film industry has completely given in to profit motives to the detriment of artistic quality. But Sociarts is supposed to represent how artists who are socially conscious - not just into making money - can get their social message out with the help of the Internet.

Sociarts is still run as a business and therefore has to make money itself, but the idea is that this online network provides more than just connections to clients and between artists. Rather, the network itself is “alive,” according to Bita. It’s based around common goals and interests, engenders trust and cooperation, and resembles an international community of artists more than a utilitarian artist network. This idea of online community is interesting to me. And the optimism and good intent of the creator are impressive. I just wonder how the artists and clients feel about it.

I’ve met artists who feel excluded from the established networks of artists in LA and perhaps have a slightly different idea of what “social consciousness” is. These artists don’t relate to the Iranian art circuits that are rooted in the spaces of wealth and privilege in West LA. The few I’ve spoken to identify more closely with the struggle of less wealthy Iranians (including those who couldn’t afford to leave Iran), and different ethnic minority groups in other parts of LA. I can’t say the role of the Internet is taking any solid shape yet among the young Iranian American artists I've talked to(who all happen to be women, by the way). However, it’s beginning to become a space for them to share their art with others inside and outside of their regular audiences. They’re learning new things about the consequences of sharing their work online, the difficulties and advantages, and it seems to be something that’s developing.

The Iranian Internet Freedom Bandwagon

Those three months went by too fast. But now I’m back, to write about a jumble of things that have happened in the meantime, in no particular order, starting, this time, with international internet solidarity with the Iranian “green movement.” Austin Heap started Haystack, an anti-censorship program. A few months back Heap was seen on stages rallying for Iran and speaking at events. TOR has had a spike in users (approx 3000) from Iran starting after the elections. Pirate Bay also declared their support for online Iranians and their “green” agenda... It has certainly caught on.

Maybe I’m totally off, but it all reminded me a bit of Fred Turner’s description of the ideals that the Internet was set up with in its early days in his book Counterculture to Cyberculture. These utopian notions from the 60s and 70s saw the Internet as a harbinger of “virtual communities” and global connectedness that was going to democratize the world. But according to Turner, this ideal has since morphed into an ideology of deregulating the newly-networked marketplace, empowering a technologically enabled elite, and encouraging the building of new businesses.

It's not the initiatives that people are taking to technologically empower Iranians that remind me of these early cyber-cultural ideas, but the reception they've been getting in the mainstream media and general public. Listening to the celebratory and somewhat self-congratulatory tone of the speakers at the Internet's "40th birthday" event last week at UCLA, these ideas still seemed very much in full force. Apparently not much has changed in 40 years in that respect.

But I don’t know if this sounds like what Heap is doing today with Iran. He started basic with just himself and Daniel Colascione and has now set up a non-profit. It seems things are much less shady this way than when the US State Department funds your project like with TOR, or has influence over your maintenance hours like with Twitter. Shady is definitely the world that comes to mind when considering the way McCain (and others) also jumped on the Iranian Internet freedom bandwagon with the legislation he announced would ensure Internet access to social networking sites in Iran. Is it just me or has the line between those who work towards freedoms for Iranians and those who want war with Iran become very fine?

The Revolution will not be Tweeted

There are so many postings, links, and updates about the Iran elections circulating around the popular social networking, blogging, and sites like facebook and twitter that include ‘microblogging’. While mainstream news sources such as CNN hailed the online media as hosting a “twitter revolution,” some tech experts reminded us that twitter was not at the center of these events because most Iranians don’t have access to twitter and the protesters inside Iran don’t actually rely on these technologies for organizing demonstrations as much as they do text messaging and word of mouth. 

On the other hand, among the young Iranian Americans I’ve been talking to, Facebook has been of massive importance in organizing gatherings, protests, and other events related to the elections and showing solidarity to those inside Iran. They have seen the spaces of their Facebook transform from domains for frivolous socializing into political spaces. I can completely relate to this experience looking at how my own Facebook news feed and profile postings have changed since the elections in June. 

I suppose Facebook is more potent here in the US for the networking and sharing aspects because Iranians here were already well-entrenched in widespread social networks on these very websites. Starting up an online social network in order to become more involved in the events after the fact doesn’t seem to be effective. Although some reported trying. But if the network is there already before the fact, it can become very easy to get caught up in the Facebook flow concerning the developments in Iran and the diaspora. Some have commented that even their Iranian American friends who previously had nothing to do with Iran are posting on Iran now. There is certainly a drive towards supporting the protesters/students/“sea of green”/green movement from all ends of the globe. It’s also been quite trendy to proclaim one's Iranian-ness, and it seems to be culminating in a particularly visible way online, as well as in offline events being organized all over the globe in support of Iranian democracy.

The fact that there was such demand for English translations of online articles and documents from Farsi to English during the post-election coverage was both a sign that Iranians were relying on the internet to get a message out and those outside were relying on it to stay informed. Bilingual readers took it upon themselves to translate and distribute material online. The up to date and detailed accounts written in English like the Huffigton Post’s and LA Times’ columns circulated widely, as did Andrew Sullivan’s blog.

The gaze of the Western public has been attracted towards Iran even more in these past weeks (and even some after MJ’s death!), and although Obama is still staying on the fence (or struggling to), we have all seen what a positive light the protesters have been shown in over here, and the effect of this Western audience through mainstream and new media outlets is no doubt having some effect. The English language “Where is my vote” placards held in Iran’s streets during protests are a pretty clear sign that the protesters are aware of this international Western audience, one of my respondents said, just as the steady stream of twitter updates in English (sometimes translated directly by other tweeters) about events inside Iran during the demonstrations also showed. He said, it appears the breadth of the transnationalisaiton of the Iranian movement is something relatively new if we make the commonly-made comparison to the revolution of ’79.

But this can't possibly just be because of Twitter and Facebook, right? I feel like it’s more likely that the public’s awareness has been raised because of the mainstream Western media (CNN obviously comes to mind) highlighting the plight of innocent protesters/voters. Several people I’ve spoken to have pointed out their concern that this image of Iranian people vs. oppressive government fits in with the image of Iran that have been promoted consistently by American news media in order to justify war with Iran on grounds of 'liberation.' Can't say it doesn't sound familiar. Suffice it to say, lots of people don't trust the 'twitter revolution.'

Facebook, Twitter, and the Iranian Elections

From where I'm sitting, the role of facebook and twitter in these Iranian elections and the post-election aftermath can't possibly be overstated.

There were already articles circulating about the importance of social networking sites like facebook in the run-up to the elections, but since the protests in reaction to the election results broke out, facebook and twitter have been the go-to sites for so many Iranians both inside and outside the country.

And it's obviously not just Iranians relying on these sites for Iran info, since the Iran elections are the hottest topic on Twitter and Google blog searches - millions of web users worldwide are waiting for the next online postings of those brave people with (limited) Internet access inside Iran, who keep writing even as they fear being tracked and ending up in grave danger. The addresses of proxy servers are being circulated on social networking sites so as to help those inside Iran evade filters. Twitters users even persuaded twitter to postpone their web maintenance to a less "intrusive" time so that updates from those who rely on twitter in Iran wouldn't be hindered as much. Later it appeared that the US State Department had a hand in this decision, which you can read more about here and here. But this was never admitted by Twitter.

Surely the others who are also following the events from afar have noticed (as I have), Facebook and Twitter status updates are temporally way ahead of big, mainstream news sources when it comes to reporting the smaller details and keeping up with events as they develop. This article even lists guidelines so users can make the most of this new "social media" for following the events in Iran.

I can safely say I saw footage of the 'riots' embedded on Facebook and linked through Youtube posted by people in Iran (and those friends and family) way before I saw anything like it on news sites. For a moment, I saw into the face of a riot policeman up close through his transparent plastic mask as he rushed the camera-person, who then turned and started running with the rest of the crowd - the camera still filming but shaking to the point where you could only see some feet, some people's backs, the ground, and hear the screams of a woman: "don't hit, don't hit". More and more of the established news agencies are airing these home-made clips since foreign reporters were ejected and banned from the country in the days following the initial uprising.

Many people in other parts of the world here are living on Iran time. Not only figuratively because they've been urged to change their location and time and date on twitter to look as though they are in Tehran to fool the censors, but also literally, because they're actually staying up nights on end to keep up with the twitter updates that are coming in continuously. Balatarin.com has even introduced continuous live streaming in Farsi from those inside Iran.

At the same time, the 'cyberwars' have also started. The limited access because of filters on sites like Facebook and Youtube quickly became international common knowledge after the election crackdown on these sites. But Iranians succeeded in getting around these obstacles to access. The battle seemed to enter a new dimension when Tehran Bureau's site was attacked yesterday and they had to temporarily rely on Facebook updates through Iran Pages and Twitter their updates. Andrew Sullivan's site was also hacked by the Iranian government people. He is a long-time political blogger whose writing on Iran was very popular, especially in these past days. Websites outside the country being successfully brought down by Iranian government forces? Maybe I'm behind, but this was something new to me (although I have to say it's really hard to prove that this was actually done by people inside Iran. Maybe it wasn't).

Maybe Tehran Bureau was targeted because it was proving to be such a particularly powerful site, being one of the very few that mixed the best of both worlds: citizen journalism + trusted news, and effectively delivered it to a substantial outside audience. They were/are keeping up with the main Farsi language sources (as I compared my information with those of my Farsi speaking friends) and they post detailed reports from the ground. For me and the English speaking friends who are following the events, TB has become indispensable.

The site is back up now, and "stronger than before," and they have apparently even taken down several state news agency sites with their own counter-attack. I got this all from their Facebook pages. But then an Iranian contact (and techie) posted a link to this article on why those attacks can be harmful. The argument that you could be contributing to the slowdown of internet in Iran in general by launching the type of attack that overloads your target's system with requests is the most interesting. This concern has grown by virtual word of mouth over the past couple of days, as people have tried to warn others.

Clearly, one of the limits to the democratizing potentials of this powerful tool (in addition to the obvious ones such as lack of universal accessibility) is that one's ignorance of how it works, combined with increased access and lower and lower barriers to engagement in cyber-battle could be like arming the untrained. But it also seems that by gaining the experience, people increase their literacy and improve their abilities to harness the potentials of these online tools in ways that best suit their cause(s).

Just like everyone who has anything to do with the Iran elections, I have lots more to say as things are constantly happening and developing. I can't get it all out right now, but will come back to it very soon.

Virtual Bureau

Some of the people I've been speaking to alerted me to this relatively new website on Iran and the Iranian diaspora called Tehran Bureau. It's one of its kind as far as I know; a site dedicated to the news, current affairs, arts etc. concerning Iranians internationally. The election coverage segments right now are especially interesting (and popular, from what I hear).

The friendly and forthcoming editor of the online publication told me that she saw the purpose of Tehran Bureau (TB) as making a break with the politicized spaces that Iranian media have created for too long in the diaspora. Objective and credible journalism is lacking and doesn't have a strong tradition among Iranians at all. That is evident from some of the weak support TB has received from members of the Iranian American community, she said.

But she also has much hope for the younger generation who are more open to and appreciative of projects like TB; people who can digest multiple perspectives and draw their own conclusions on the basis of factual reports on Iran; including young Iranians who are getting back to their "roots" like she, herself, sought to do in becoming more active and interested in issues concerning Iran. She also sees Iranians as being in a good position to cover their own people and country, tell their own personal stories, and describe their own experiences and impressions. In this editor's experience, this is something there is less space for in many mainstream American news agencies, where being Iranian is seen more as a hindrance to objectivity in covering Iran issues than a facilitation of in-depth understanding of the events occurring there.

This "virtual bureau" is virtually "located" in Tehran, which makes it very curious, as most of its contributors live outside Iran. The reasons for this are no mystery. Many Iranians cannot return, and some will not be allowed to leave if they do. TB's writers are no exception, and may not feel as safe writing in Iran as they do, for instance, in the US. On top of that, one contributor told me that inside Iran he wouldn't be able to consult all the Farsi sites that informed his writing here, as many of them were filtered there.

If the freedom and access to information about Iran is so much greater outside the country, could it be that in some ways, setting up a "virtual bureau" is actually more authoritative than being there?

Understandably, TB still sees value in having some correspondents report from inside Iran, but the current perspective is predominantly Iranian American. This particular slant may make the online publication all the more significant because it speaks best to policy makers, other journalists, and just regular people in the US. That could have powerful positive impacts. But what about the audience of second generation Iranians? Without the language skills to follow sources in Iran, are they(we) going to be learning about their(our) country more and more "virtually" from now on? Will we find our "roots" from a distance? Will that be better?

Filming/Blogging your return. What's the appeal?

I was at the Noor Film Festival in West LA a couple of weeks ago.


There were some great films, but some of the most interesting to me, given the themes of my research, were the ones that young Iranian Americans had made about their trips to Iran. Whether for the first time, or returning for another visit, none of these young film-makers had grown up in Iran or lived there for any significant expanse of time. But they felt enough of a connection to the country itself to actually dedicate their time, efforts, talents, and other resources to documenting their travels to Iran and telling the stories they had to tell about themselves and about America(ns) and Iran(ians) while doing so.

The three film-makers I am talking about also each have websites that are pretty impressive. Sam Ali Kashani's film "Tehran: Another Side" has film segments on his website, Nooshin Navidi's "Young Republic" is summarized on hers, and Justin Mashouf's "Warring Factions" has a trailer here and his blog is here.

Speaking of blogs, I've also met a number of Iranian American bloggers whose stories of return are echoed in those of Sam, Nooshin, and Justin. "Returnees" who are discovering Iran for the first time more than returning to anything they have known in the past, yet at the same time seem to feel like they're going back to a place they (at least partially) come from. It seems more and more of the second generation is seeking this journey of (self) discovery, and also wanting to engage an audience of others to participate in it with them through making a film about it, or a blog, or both. I wonder why sharing this experience with others is so important, and what the chosen media of film and blogging have to offer over others.

Getting back in the swing…

From the long silence you can tell I haven’t really got the hang of this research blog-writing business. I was starting to wonder why I got myself into this whole mess to begin with. But then I met someone who happened to see my blog. This practical stranger urged me to start up again. The realization that a real life person actually read what I was writing and wanted to know more made me finally get over myself and just keep writing.

I came to LA late last year and spent about 2 months talking to various interesting people; almost all of whom would call themselves Iranians of the ‘hyphenated’ kind (Iranian-American). Looking back, it was a couple of months of randomness and following anything that seemed at all interesting at the time. It was a time during which I taped interviews with some “prominent members” of the “Iranian-American community” in Los Angles and Orange Counties – a category of people which I had only heard stories about from outside the US and seen fringes of on my childhood family visits to Southern California. I soon noticed the same thing that many of the respondents I talked to also mentioned about LA Iranians: to a very large extent all the stories and stereotypes were true.

But on the other hand I also talked to Iranians I didn’t expect to meet; people who surprised and intrigued me. So these early months also turned out to be a time for casual discussions with new friends through water-pipe smoke on a warm night on Westwood Boulevard – with them being amused by not being able to quite place my strange accent when I spoke Farsi. It was also a time when I did a lot of wandering among, and questioning of people without really knowing exactly why, or where it was all going. But ultimately I was able to mix these bouts of confusion with the intermittent moments of clarity that drove me to come back again, this time with a refreshed and somewhat more personal interest in the research I am doing and the people it’s about.

Who are the Second Generation?... And what are they doing that’s new?

Coming back to LA from the Netherlands again, I am a bit more focused this time; focused mainly on the second generation and the new things they are doing on/with the Internet. I would call the first generation those who moved over here in adulthood – many during the early 80s on, but some earlier – and the second generation their children. Many of these kids are now in early adulthood and are doing interesting things Online, which I will get into more soon.

I know this picture of Iranian American migrant generations is quite a limited and static one. It doesn’t deal all the various in-between generations of people who came to this country as minors with their parents but have many memories of Iran, or those who have much more recently come over as young adults but end up with second generational peers. Indeed, anyone’s generational age group is difficult enough to delineate and may change with the social context, even without taking migration into account, so this is a dynamic and tricky category. But one of the things that’s most interesting to me is how and when generational gaps are experienced from the perspective of those young Iranians who are native speakers of English, call America their home, and can generally be called ‘the second generation,’ but want to ‘stay Iranian,’ however they define that. How are these young people being Iranian in different ways than their parents and what role do the use of Online media communications play in the way they do this?