Web keeps Iran news flowing

The internet continues to play a central part in the protests in Iran, which are nearing the end of their first week.

On Twitter, the hashtag #iranelection has topped the trending topics chart since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the incumbent, was returned to power in a landslide victory.

The importance of Twitter as an effective communication tool for disseminating information relating to the elections and subsequent protests has been a hot topic in the press recently.

What is Twitter?

However, some critics have pointed out that there is more "noise than signal".

Joshua Kucera, writing in True/Slant compiled a list of questionable tweets coming out of Iran following the elections results.

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Among the dubious statements made on Twitter were claims that three million people protested last Monday in Tehran.

Other tweets alleged that the losing candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi, was put under house arrest, and the president of the election-monitoring committee declared the election invalid on Saturday. None of these claims have been verified.

Follow events from Iran on YouTube

However, Twitter's multiplying effect cannot be played down - protesters setting up meeting points in Tehran can efficiently and quickly reach significant numbers of people.

Conversely, because Twitter is an open network, security forces can use the service to monitor and spread disinformation.

Twitter postponed a scheduled upgrade to its network earlier this week, allegedly at the request of the American State Department, although Twitter has maintained that the decision to delay was arrived at independently.

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The Iranian internet is heavily monitored and Iranian bloggers are using proxy servers based inside and outside Iran to pass data between computers without being blocked.