The PDA Is Mightier Than the Sword
There’s a lot going on in Iran right now. Current President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, defeated main reformist candidate Hossein Mousavi and two others. In the meantime, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has declared Ahmadinejad the clear winner and has asked all Iranians to unite behind his leadership. Personally, I’m more than a little ignorant on the socio-political structure in Iran, so I’m not in a position to criticize the Ayatollah’s role as a one-man supreme court; but I do find it perplexing – to say the least. If any of you can link to an interesting [re: succinct] article that can sum up this dynamic, I’d be much obliged.
The part about this struggle that is ‘sexy’ is the aforementioned victory has been downtrodden amidst speculation that widespread corruption, ballot-stuffing and general shady activity is the true cause of the purportedly maligned election results. I’m not a political scientist, but given the overwhelming mounds of data, I am inclined to raise an eyebrow in suspicion. For more information, check out this chronology that I found pretty enlightening.
Web 2.0 has played a vital role in our understanding of the events as they have unfolded, and that is really the point of this article. On June 16, reporters were restricted from reporting from the streets of Iran, essentially terminating any connection to the truth the western world hoped to maintain. Unlike Tiananmen Square, however, gonzo journalism has taken to the PDA, and YouTube is littered with videos of rally supporters and folks of Persian descent decrying the current milieu and eschewing the populist regime. It seems that instead of scouring for a window into the plight of the Iranian citizen, we are instead deluded by an influx of personal 45 second micro-tales and crudely shaped vignettes.
In a time when firms are continually attempting to rationalize spending efforts and shore up ROI, the direct reach and impact of social media rears its timely head. If Twitter and Facebook can lead a counter-cultural revolution, what can they do for the DJIA? All I know is that we can ‘easily’ show our support via the Twitter version of a red ribbon lapel: a green-tinted avatar .
After all, we are each humans first and marketers second. Well, at least so much so are those of us lucky enough to be counted among the latter. 
