With its large, tech-savvy population of people under 30, Iran is fertile ground for a social media campaign by U.S. Broadcasters
The main U.S.-funded broadcasters have long battled the misperception that they are anachronisms using an outmoded medium — radio — in a world that increasingly relies on more diverse forms of communication. In fact, organizations like the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty disseminate information through a wide array of new platforms. In few countries are new media efforts more ambitious, and more closely watched, than in Iran.
The two primary Persian-language broadcasters funded by Congress — VOA’s Persian News Network satellite TV station and RFE/RL’s Radio Farda — are 24-hour operations. In addition to their core TV and radio services, they stream extensive content onto their Web sites; transmit local, international and U.S.-focused programming via blogs, Twitter feeds and news alerts to mobile phones; upload videos to YouTube; and manage dynamic Facebook pages.
Together with the BBC and other foreign-based media, these stations play an important role as conduits of information into and out of Iran. The regime denounces these media efforts as a “soft war” waged by outside forces and has responded by mounting one of the world’s most intense censorship efforts: jamming broadcasts, blocking Web sites and infiltrating Facebook accounts. A kind of cat-and-mouse game has ensued, with many Iranians keeping a step ahead of the censors, in part with the help of anti-filtering software from U.S. sources that is exempted from sanctions by the U.S. government...