Iran Crisis Points To Future Of News Gathering

Although it’s not really PSFK’s place to discuss whether a bunch of students (and technology) could or should create massive regime change in Iran, the crisis situation provides another example of how news gathering is changing to a scenario where local news content can be accessed directly by readers and publishers in near real-time.

While the authorities in Iran are trying to hamper news and information dissemination (by even blocking SMS and even a satellite!), digital social media is providing opportunities both for people at the protests in Tehran to share their reports and for people around the world to share, discuss and mass-edit those reports.

Examples of direct news reporting:

* Flickr photos tagged Tehran
* Tweets on Twitter marked #IranElection
* Latest videos tagged Iran on YouTube
* ‘Where Is My Vote?’ group on Facebook
* Personal photo blog on Picasa
* A blogger’s live reporting

The BBC also has a lot more links to uses of social media to spread information about the events unfolding.

[Image via nojan eminem]