Iran and Twitter

Roughly ten new messages on Iran every seven seconds sent out on Twitter. (#IranElection) While the access and ability to communicate is a serious matter for those who are being censored (citizens of China, Burma, North Korea, Iran), it isn't hardly as useful because, of those last ten messages, five said not to list the Iranian twitter IDs, three others said to change your timezone to Tehran's.
One of them asked "isn't this a good way to spread misinfo too?" The user, simpleurbane, must have thought what anybody would have if they were following this cascade of chatter. Nobody is reliable on Twitter, and information is perhaps more prone to being lost in the various circles it runs through. The army has moved in. No it hasn't. The Lebanese army is in. No it isn't. etc.
Still others relate the feed and the protests to their safe day-to-day, maintaining, it seems, the social-journal function of Twitter.

"i should sleep after a 13 hour shift yesterday and work at 6 tomorrow. reading about #iranelection is too crazy though"

Some others post on photos from the attacks, new videos are up, reputedly from Iranians in Exile, asking the rest of the world to keep from apathy and stand with their human counterparts demanding a fair governing party. I don't know how to do that.

"RT We may be thousands of miles apart, but we all stand together today. #iranelection"

I DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS, if anything.

Posting photos, videos, listing off email servers that are being blocked, reporting murders and reporting that camera/laptop carrying citizens are attacked on the street - this is all information that is spun around and used, collaboratively, to put pressure on an oppressive theocracy and band a digital legion of individuals together, sloppy and unorganized as we may be.

http://bit.ly/Q6T1s - Q/A with NYU professor Shirky on Twitter's effect on Iranian riots.

The representatives of our government have a difficult position to uphold (that is, if one sees a government as a tool for/of a people) and it would have been that a nation's united individuals would call on their government to speak for them. We can call on ours to acknowledge that an actual election did not take place and that it won't support a government that oppresses, censors and attacks its own citizens. What can we do, as citizens, to take a step past messaging each other constantly?

"Twitter's impact inside Iran is zero," said Mehdi Yahyanejad, manager of a Farsi-language news site based in Los Angeles. "Here, there is lots of buzz, but once you look . . . you see most of it are Americans tweeting among themselves." http://tiny.cc/3gNFY

It's a good article, and it goes on to cite an Iranian student saying that Twitter is the only means of communication they have to the outside world.