Image-encounters with the techno-mediated other: Regarding post-election Iran on Youtube

In June 2009 large-scale public demonstrations
on the streets of Tehran followed Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad’s controversial claiming of victory
in the Republic’s most recent election. As the
scale of the unrest rapidly escalated, foreign
journalists were expelled from the country and
unprecedented numbers of Iranian journalists
were imprisoned (Sreberny and Khiabany 176).
Observers outside of Iran learned of the events as
Iranians on the streets embraced image production
and distribution as a central component of
their protest. Evading the attempts of the regime
to control media coverage of the post-election
violence, Iranians uploaded rough footage, still
images, and blog entries, seeking to make real
their experiences for the international community.
A stream of citizen-produced footage of
mass demonstrations, beatings and deaths was
relayed to the world at large via Internet-based
social networking channels and mobile phones.
This paper takes a series of images from the
mediated turmoil in Iran as a prism through
which to consider the problem of what it is that
such images make real for distant observers.