Guest Lecture: “Tweeting in Tehran: Lessons on How to Win (or Lose) a Revolution in the 21st Century”

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

4:30 PM Scheuer Room, Kohlberg Hall

by Kouross Esmaili

Recent events in Tehran have revolutionized our use of technology. The city has become an unlikely site to maximize the instantaneous connection that the internet and satellite technologies provide. What was this moment following June 22, 2009 that has become known as Tehran’s Twitter Revolution. What does the recent political unrest in Iran tell us about our own uses of technology, politics, organizing and fighting for justice?

Kouross Esmaili is an Iranian-American filmmaker, producer and independent journalist whose work ranges from documentaries about Iraq, Lebanon and Iran to domestic work about the Jena Six and post-Katrina New Orleans. He has worked for a series of news agencies, including al-Jazeera, Democracy Now, Current TV, and Press TV among others. Additionally, Kouross won the Edward R. Murrow Award for Best Television Network Documentary from the Radio-Television News Directors Association in 2005 for his work on Iraq for MTV. Kouross is one of the premier voices covering the Iranian elections as well as a producer of the recently launched BoomGen TV, a website dedicated to ????ews for the internationally inclined.