ON: Social Coverage of Iranian Elections

The power of a good story seems to have taken over the social media channels this weekend. From Twitter to YouTube to Flickr, people across the globe are contributing to the social movement in Iran.  Some how on Friday CNN failed to pick up on the importance of this story.  Friday afternoon, while the Iranian people were fighting for their freedom at the ballots, CNN's home page headline was about Chaz Bono. (While I am happy that Chaz is going to have a sex change, was her change news that mattered???)   

Evidently I was not the only disgruntled newsie. Thousands of Twitter users adopted the hashtag #CNNfail to highlight a lack of Iranian coverage from the news organization. According to Mashable several tweets were comparing coverage by other "real" news organizations.  Twitter has many uses.  One of my favorites is when communities of people tweet-out and call bullshit on the "mainstream" media outlets.  

If you are interested in following second-by-second information you should turn to twitter instead of CNN.  There are people
on-the-ground and across the globe chatting in real time on every aspect of this historic event.   You can track the chatter by using the following hashtags and keywords: #IranElection, #Ahmadinejad, #Mousavi, and  #iranelection #greenscream #weargreen #DDOS #Tehran.

Another way of seeing unfiltered coverage is on YouTube.

Mashable has assembled a list of YouTube Channels that are broadcasting their unfiltered coverage.

Who do you think has had the best Iranian Election coverage?  If you see links, videos, photos or know someone sharing their coverage from the ground,  then join the new media eco-system and let us know by sharing your info!

Sources:

• Mashable: HOW TO: Track Iran Election with Twitter and Social Media
• Mashable: #CNNfail: Twitter Blasts CNN Over Iran Election
• NEWS-US-IRAN-ELECTION- vnnb2's photostream
• **IRAN: Police attack and beat protesters

*UPDATE MONDAY - 2:23AM EST

*Mehdi Karrobi, one of the two other presidential candidates in the race besides Mousavi and Ahmadinejad, joins in the street protests.

**UPDATE: Monday 12:54am

**TheRealTexas PLEASE RT Functioning Iran proxies 218.128.112.18:8080 218.206.94.132:808 218.253.65.99:808 219.50.16.70:8080 #iranelection #tehran

**RT @IranNewsNow Iranians need to know that protests are in most if not all major cities in Iran, so they are not alone. #IranElection

**@jojobickley FOR THE STUDENTS IN IRAN #IranElection "Be Free" Song ♫ http://twt.fm/159275 (RT NOW)

**#foxfail has been added to the list of Mainstream News Failure hashtags.

nycskp@jojobickley POST ALL VIDS ON LIVE LEAK www.liveleak.com they will not take them down #youtubefail #cnnfail #iranelection

Huffington Post: Iran Updates (VIDEO): Live-Blogging The Uprising

**NYTimes: Real-Time Criticism of CNN’s Iran Coverage