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Emil Steiner December 6, 2010

David, Excalibur, Icarus: News Coverage of the Twitter Revolution as a Three-‐Act Myth Cycle

Summary

Tear gas and chaos filled the streets of Tehran last June.1 Oppressed, green-‐clad Iranians, protesting the

disputed re-‐election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, clashed with police in Facebook-‐coordinated

demonstrations while the world watched, not on television but on Twitter. Blogs at the Atlantic 2 and

Huffington Post3 chronicled the Tweets of young revolutionaries speaking truth to tyranny while

YouTube broadcasted videos of their martyrdom. News reporters found themselves in the midst of a

seismic, democratic shift thanks to new technologies which allowed anyone with a cell phone to become

a journalist. A brave new world of accessible information lay at our fingertips. Truth seemed only a click

away.4

At least that’s how a lot western media portrayed the “Twitter Revolution.” Since then scholars and

media analysts have largely downplayed and in some cases debunked the Revolution’s validity and

impact. That one would be hard pressed to find a news cycle absent of the word Twitter is seen by some

critics as a further indication of the demise of journalistic standards. Nonetheless, what happened was

memorable though its impact is still being assessed. This essay will attempt to add clarity to that

assessment by examining the coverage and criticism as a unified framework of narrative storytelling.

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Methodology and Mythology

The gallons of ink spilled covering the “Twitter Revolution” over the past 16 months can be roughly

divided into three categories: A) Reporting on the election and protests and how microblogging and

crowdsourcing tools facilitated both, B) Coverage and commentary about how those new technologies

could revolutionize not just nations but journalism, and C) Critical analysis of A and B.

As my research indicates, much of the writing in A and B used myth as a framework to give context to

what was happening, while C has mostly focused on the inaccuracies and missteps A and B fell prey to

by doing so within a rapidly accelerating news cycle caused by the “revolutionary” technology. Rather

than join that already noisy conversation, this essay will instead analyze all three categories as a social

phenomenon through the lens of narrative storytelling. Taken together, this essay argues that A, B, and

C form a narrative framework that can be applied in the analysis of past and future critical news events.

Through the lens of narrative storytelling, the framework’s three categories can be understood as acts in

a myth cycle, each dependent on the other and each with its own distinct archetypes that function

independently: A) David vs. Goliath, B) Excalibur C) Icarus.

While journalism and news can be viewed through many lenses, the value in analyzing critical incidents,

like this one, as narratives is akin to the value in reporting them that way.5 By creating a usable

framework based on shared stories this essay can be used to explain how the “Twitter Revolution” was

covered and analyzed. And though admittedly blunt, it can also be used to provoke questions about the

coverage of similar stories.

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Three Acts in Brief

David v. Goliath

During the run up to the Iran’s 10th presidential elections, western journalists reported that candidates,

particularly those running against incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, used social networking

tools to organize grass roots campaigning.6 After the disputed elections of June 12th, protests erupted

across Iran as supporters of opposition leader Mir-‐Hossein Mousavi alleged widespread fraud at the

ballots. The western press also reported that protesters were using Twitter and Facebook to organize

demonstrations.7 That storyline became rapidly accepted as the reality of what was happening on the

streets of Iran, and idea of a “Twitter Revolution” exploded across our shared consciousness.8

Excalibur’s Power

On June 16th, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei banished members of the press9 and news outlets

were forced to rely almost entirely on crowdsourcing technologies like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube

to gather firsthand accounts. During this critical incident10 the technology itself became as salient a

storyline as that of the opposition using it to fight oppression.11 Many in the press elevated the

technology to the status of a revolutionary weapon with which to fight tyranny and reform the

profession of journalism.12 Because of the instant news cycle that the technology created, the fact that it

was the most accessible source for information, its novelty and power skewed the marketplace of ideas

and, as was later argued, encouraged news outlets to overlook accuracy for immediacy.

Icarus Rhymes With Hubris

Once the fog of tear gas and hash tags cleared and media scholars began to examine the coverage, a

third storyline emerged. Academic publications and longer form analysis pieces became sharply critical

of the exuberance with which the media had used and portrayed the power of social networking and

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crowd sourcing technologies.13 While recognizing some utility, the reactionary tone of much of the Third

Act writings tamped down the significance of the “Twitter Revolution” with nearly as much alacrity as

the Second Act writings had overhyped it. Media critics proffered prudence in using the new

technologies while pessimistically predicting that those working within the ever-‐quickening news cycle

would predictably err again.14 Their demythologization fulfilled the archetype of Daedalus warning his

son Icarus about flying to close to the sun and perhaps the Gods punishing Icarus for his hubris.

Research

The three-‐act myth cycle presented here was developed after a comprehensive examination of the

global news coverage of the 10th Iranian presidential elections. As trusted providers of information, the

word choices journalists make affect readers’ interpretations of the news -‐-‐ the how and why.15

Examining news as both a story and a text,16 involved a systematic qualitative and quantitative analysis

of the word choices reporters and editors made, specifically in the pre and post election coverage. The

use of non-‐neutral words such as “David,” “Goliath,” “tyranny,” “hero,” “oppression/oppressive,” “evil,”

“dictator/dictatorship,” “repression/repressive,” “freedom,” “revolution,” “underdog,” and “courage”

was interpreted as an indication of a regression toward the David vs. Goliath narrative.

An examination of micro-‐blogging, crowdsourcing and social networking during the time before and

after the elections was also undertaken. This research examined word choices used to describe the role

of those technologies during the period from June 11th to June 17nd and the frequency with which such

terms as “Twitter/Tweet/tweeting/Facebook/social network/crowdsoucring/microbloging/sms

appeared in headlines and in articles. Additionally a comprehensive analysis of the opinions and editorial

commentary on the emerging technologies’ impact on elections and journalism was undertaken and a

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similar analysis was done of the scholarly writings about the coverage, from academic journals and trade

publications as well as policy papers and magazines.

The investigation and findings inspired the notion of a three-‐act myth cycle that provoked further

research into journalism theory and cultural anthropology. Writings on how myths and archetypes in

narrative story telling give readers a necessary context for understanding narrowed the scope of this

essay, while providing background for the cultural phenomenon of journalism during key moments

when the profession and service of journalism sometimes evolve. Codifying the three-‐act myth cycle

into a framework for analyzing critical incidents followed, as did the research, still ongoing, to apply it

retroactively to other critical incidents to understand if and to what extent it has historical context.

Interpreting “Critical Incidents” as Myth Narratives

Journalism’s roots are in storytelling, but they are not identical. Both seek to enlighten and inform,

though journalism has a stronger obligation to accuracy. Being “a mediated symbolic system, news does

not stand in an identical position in culture as say, oral tradition.”17 But like a proto-‐language there are

discernable traits of storytelling in journalism. “All writing, all narrative art depends upon dramatic unity,

bringing together plot, character, scene, method, and purpose,” writes James W. Carey. Journalists write

stories, but those stories are constrained by the impetus to convey, often through the limits of style and

convention, the who, what, where and when first.18

As Steve Barkin notes: “Storytellers make sense of the world. They organize phenomena into scenarios,

which imply that there are reasons for what has happened. Journalists compartmentalize human

activity.”19 However, there are, as Barkin points out, certain types of events where journalists push the

limits of their professional stylistic constraints. During news events where a cause-‐and-‐effect, just-‐the-‐

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facts attitude does not sufficiently explain what is happening, the primitive conventions of oral tradition

can find their way onto the broadsheets and news sites sometimes superseding conventions and

constraints.20 Such storytelling narratives, with heroes and villains, rely on archetypes for context,

tapping into our collective experience for recognizable patterns of behavior with predictable outcomes.

These news events are consistent with what George Gerbner referred to as “critical incidents”21 and

what Levi-‐Strauss called “hot moments.”22 Like the Kennedy Assignation, the first Gulf War and the

recent elections in Iran they are incidents during which the eyes of the world search for explanation of a

tumult. During such events the chaos creates an intense public thirst for context and historically the

press has been there to quell it. News is how the public finds order in chaos, but complicated stories can

be difficult to explain in the limits of an article and nuance can be even harder to fit into a sound bite.23

Further the immediacy of these incidents – the intensity of the thirst if you will – mandates drastic

measures. In response the press often applies narratives – popularly accepted storylines that need little

explanation – as a framework for telling the news.24

"Critical incidents,” Barbie Zelizer notes “are generally shaped by discourse about two features:

technology and archetypal figures." In the case of the Kennedy assignation, the television news was the

technology, in the case of the first Iraq War it was satellite feeds, and in the case of the Iranian elections

it was crowdsourcing. In addition journalists often use critical incidents as a way of redefining the craft –

the hows and whys of the profession.25 This creates a multi-‐dimensional dynamic. First news providers

are using new technologies and archetypes to make sense of the news and then media analysts attempt

to make sense of the use of archetypes and new technology’s impact on news coverage. But what if that

analysis is itself part of an overriding and interconnected narrative?

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In the commentary on the coverage of the Iranian elections scholars and critics, it could be argued,

fulfilled an archetype – that of Daedalus, Icarus’s father, warning against flying to close to the sun or the

Gods themselves castigating the hubris of eager reporters to embrace the new technology while

neglecting their responsibilities to professional standards. Therefore in applying this myth framework to

coverage of critical incidents it is necessary to also analyze the coverage of the coverage through the

lens of narrative storytelling. This is to look at news coverage as Bird & Dardenne suggest “both as a

body of work that is a continuing story of human activity, and as individual stories that contribute to

that continuing one.”26

Act One: David vs. Goliath

The narrative of David vs. Goliath has a villain and a hero. It is both universal and extremely appealing to

the American notion of independence.27 It was sown into the national identity at its birth, The War of

Independence, and in the subsequent messianic interpretations and recordings of that history. God

blessed America, she defeated her oppressive ruler England and created a new Jerusalem.28 Despite

America’s contemporary reputation as the world’s Super Power, the story of the underdog remains a

salient part of the American identity in culture, sport, and news coverage. Indeed the unexpected nature

of the weak overcoming the strong is a siren song that news conflict stories naturally gravitate toward.29

There are three essential elements of the narrative, (leaving aside God and faith for the purposes of this

essay): David, the weaker oppressed hero; Goliath, the powerful, oppressive villain; David’s sling, the

instrument with which he overcomes Goliath’s advantage. In the American Revolution, the “one if by

land, two if by sea” candles placed in the windows of patriots filled the role of sling.30

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The Iranian elections contained all three elements. The opposition supporters of Mir-‐Hossein Mousavi fit

the archetype of David, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the Goliath of the Iranian regime recognized

by the western world as oppressive, and cellphones (the handheld conduit through the oppressed cast

stones of truth via social networking tools like Twitter) as the sling.

Based on my examination of the reporting I have found that the combination created a natural and

perhaps inevitable gravitation by the western media toward using the narrative as a framework through

which to report and explain the complex events unfolding in Iran. As Ronald Reagan once put it:

"Technology will make it increasingly difficult for the state to control the information its people receive.

The Goliath of totalitarianism will be brought down by the David of the microchip.” Those prophetic

words were never more embraced by journalists as during the Twitter Revolution.

Choice Word Choices

The clearest proof of news organizations embracing the David vs. Goliath narrative is the direct

references to it in reportage. From May 1 to June 30, 2009, at least 29 English news articles used the

words “David” and “Goliath” in their coverage of Iran. Beyond the direct references, word choices in

stories reflect a more subtle embracing of the narrative. From May 1 to June 30, 200 news articles

contained the word “tyranny” at least once in stories involving Iran. Over that same period, 48

contained the word “underdog,” 215 contained the word “hero,” 303 contained the words

“oppression/oppressive,” 341 contained the word “courage,” 557 contained the word “evil,” 886

contained the words “repression/repressive,” 1,309 contained the words “dictator/dictatorship,” 2,197

contained the word “freedom,” and 3,617 contained the word “revolution.”

Beyond the quantitative analysis, a qualitative examination of the tone of the reporting during the week

of June 12th indicates an abdication of the convention of neutral news coverage.

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From the Washington Post: “Millions of Iranians take to the streets to defy a theocratic dictatorship

that, among its other finer qualities, is a self-‐declared enemy of America and the tolerance and liberties

it represents.”31

From the Evening Standard (London): “THE WEAKEST moment for a dictatorship, says de Tocqueville, is

when a bad regime tries to reform itself. That is when the weaknesses are most apparent, its

contradictions manifest. It is also when its leaders show their fear of the people. So the Iranian regime,

which only a few days ago was deriding opposition parties crying foul at the tampered election results

as mere "disappointed football fans", suddenly concedes the possibility of limited recounts to buy off

dissent it cannot control.”32

From the New York Times: “But for those who dreamed of a gentler Iran, Saturday was a day of

smoldering anger, crushed hopes and punctured illusions, from the streets of Tehran to the policy

centers of Western capitals. Iranians who hoped for a bit more freedom, a better managed economy

and a less reviled image in the world wavered between protest and despair on Saturday.”33

Interestingly in the same June 14 issue of the New York Times there was an unrelated article on A24

titled “Social Network, TV Network: Did You Tweet?” It wasn’t until the next day or so that Twitter

began to take over and the narrative shifted. Within the David and Goliath story, David slays Goliath

with the help of his sling. And while that primitive weapon remains forever tied to the biblical tale, David

goes on to rule Israel without it. This is not the case in the second narrative.

Act Two: Excalibur’s Power

The sword Excalibur is not just a prop in the legend of King Arthur, it is a character with its own plot arc

and magical powers. In the most famous version, (there are at least two versions of the legend), the

mighty sword begins its arc stuck in a stone and Merlin predicts that the person who can remove it will

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become king of Britain. Much like in the David and Goliath narrative, it is not the strongest person but

the seemingly weakest -‐-‐ a young boy named Arthur -‐-‐ who is worthy of the task. Anointed king of

Britain, Arthur uses Excalibur to protect and defend Britain from the forces of evil. So powerful was the

sword that on his death bed Arthur asked Sir Bedivere to throw Excalibur into a lake and so alluring was

its power that Bedivere had to be asked several times before he complied.34

Unlike David’s sling, Excalibur remained by Arthur’s side until the end. Its power was transferable and

without it he could not have banished the Saxons and killed evil monsters over the course of his reign, as

legend has it. So if the Paul Revere’s “one if by land two if by sea” candle warning is akin to David’s sling,

Excalibur is symbolic of America’s a-‐bomb circa 1945. Its power made Arthur supreme for a time, but

anyone who possessed it could take advantage of its power.

The comparison of the “Twitter Revolution” to Excalibur is twofold – much like the revolution itself.

There is the Twitter et al. (taken broadly to include Facebook, microblogging and crowdsourcing/social

networking technology) as a tool to rally dissidents in reform movements and the Twitter et al. that,

legend has it, revolutionized journalism. A comprehensive analysis of the news coverage of both aspects

indicates that the transition from Twitter et al. as a sling for the revolution in Iran to Excalibur for the

revolution of journalism began after Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei banished the foreign

press. In addition to examining the overall tone and content of the reporting, a quantative analysis of

the coverage was also conducted comparing the number and frequency of certain key words used in the

coverage.

In both folds, the arc of Twitter et. al. began the same. It was seen, perhaps as Excalibur was when it

was stuck in the stone, as a nuisance or an amusing distraction. In 2007 The Star Tribune characterized

the technology as “the most useless productivity-‐destruction mechanism the Internet has produced.”35

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Numerous recent articles celebrating Twitter, in fact, lead with a witty reference of how it’s not just for

posting what you had for lunch anymore.3637

As a tool for organizing political campaigns, Twitter came of age during the 2008 U.S. presidential

elections. In its 2008 year in review, The Baltimore Sun wrote that “Twitter was probably the biggest

new tool of the year, even if many people couldn't figure out the allure, or the business model, of micro-‐

blogging in 140 characters or fewer. The invention made a splash during the summer's political

conventions.”38

Like so many trends deemed alluring in America, Twitter and Facebook began taking off internationally

soon after. A microcosm of Twitter et al.’s role in the Iranian elections took place in Moldova during its

elections in April 2009.39 At first it was used by campaigners and then as tool to organize protesters

following alleged voter fraud. “Digital tools like Twitter, Facebook and SMS text messaging played a key

role in the massive youth protests that rocked the Communist government in the former Soviet republic

of Moldova.”40

The seed for the storyline was planted and ready to blossom as campaigning began for the 10th Iranian

Presidential elections, and journalists reported how grassroots opposition campaigns were forming

online. “The Internet played a major role as well, whether through well-‐known social-‐networking sites

such as Facebook and Twitter, or through large e-‐mail listservs such as 88camp (88 being the current

Iranian year), which boasted nearly four-‐hundred-‐thousand subscribers.”41 When the Iranian election

results became disputed and citizens took the streets, reporters wrote that social networking was being

used to organize the protests as it had in Moldova,42 a contention sharply disputed during Act Three of

this framework.43

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“Despite the government crackdown, Iranians used technology like Twitter and YouTube to take matters

into their own hands.”44 That Twitter had limited Farsi capability was overlooked. Rumor and conjecture

grew too hot not to report as the power of Excalibur was flexed by the masses.

“If you’ve been following other blogs or Twitter, the evidence for a stolen election in Iran is pretty good

right about now… the Interior Ministry, appear to have lost control of the information they were trying

to contain, apparently that Mousavi may actually have won the election. Rumors are spreading that the

members of the opposition, Mir-‐Hossein Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi, and even former president

Mohammad Khatami have all been arrested. Protesters were still on the streets as late as an hour ago

according to Twitter user mohamadreza, who has been making excellent first hand updates about the

situation in Tehran.”45

Shifting Storyline

Twitter et al.’s Cinderella like transformation from sling to Excalibur was nearly complete. The critical

incident which shifted the story from act one to act two took place near the stroke of midnight June 15th

when foreign correspondents were banished by Iranian authorities. Journalists were now forced to rely

on scarcely verifiable crowdsourcing for their on the ground coverage. Twitter “enabled the powerless

to survive a brutal crackdown and information blackout by the ruling authorities,” wrote Marc Ambinder

in the Atlantic.46

Much as major news sites had turned to CNN as the lone, up to the minute news source during the first

Gulf War, 47 now CNN and other major news organizations were relying on Twitter et al.’s up to the

minute photos videos and reports from the streets of Tehran. By doing so it appeared, to some

journalists, that journalism itself was undergoing a revolution. “Twitter feed #iranelection has replaced

CNN as the go-‐to place for breaking news about this dramatic, heart-‐wrenching story (see #cnnfail).”48

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A Washington Times commentary aptly titled, “Age of Twitter vs. Tyranny – An Army of Davids take on

an Ayatollah Goliath” extolled that “Twitter is in the vanguard of an army of cybernauts whose speedy

steeds are propelling both democratic and authoritarian governments through a period of social change

more profound than anything we have experienced in 5,000 years of recorded history… the new

limitless ability to listen and respond is not only impacting the exchange of ideas on a global scale; it is

impacting national security. Iran is the lodestar.”49

50

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Commentary in the Denver Post also aptly describes the shifting storyline: “What's so compelling about

the Iran story is, of course, where it's happening and when it's happening and also the role of new

technology in bringing the story to the rest of the world.”51 The new technology no longer just a part of

the story it was becoming a story itself.

Exemplifying Exalibur’s arc, America, a national Catholic weekly magazine, heralded Twitter’s

transformation from “a service that once conveyed the merely trivial” to a powerful tool that “has

played, and may continue to play, a vital role in global liberation.”52

On June 17th AFP declared: “Twitter Comes of Age.”53 That date is also a milestone in the quantitative

analysis of word choices – it was when Twitter et. al. was mentioned in more articles than “Iran.” That

rise began in the week following the election, when an exponential increase in the number of headlines

containing the words “Twitter or Tweet or tweeting or Facebook or social network or crowdsoucring or

microbloging or sms” occurred. From June 13 to June 17 the number of headlines containing those

keywords jumped from 149 to 319. Over that same period the number of articles mentioning those

keywords soared from 821 articles to 1,759. These numbers clearly indicate that Twitter et. al. was

becoming a bigger story, but what of Iran? On June 13, 309 articles had Iran in the headline and by June

17, 355 contained the word. Similarly 846 articles contained the word “Iran” on June 13 and 1,659

articles did on June 17.

These numbers do not show that Twitter et al. had replaced Iran as the storyline but they do indicate

that both storylines grew in popularity together. What should be noted is that the story was originally

about Iran. The Excalibur narrative was birthed from the sling of David in the first narrative but had, in

less than a week become its own major storyline. By the 17th the quantity and timbre of the writing

indicate that the “revolutionary” technology was at least as popular a storyline as that of the protesters

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using it. David Aldridge, my former colleague at the Washington Post, even posted on Facebook on June

17 the he “hopes the dinosaurs still in my business that think that YouTube, Twitter and blogs are

ruining "journalism" see how the Iranian protests are being disseminated to the world. This revolution

will not be televised...it will be Tweeted.”

In a June 18 piece titled “Twitter 1, CNN 0” the Economist gave a measured but telling analysis, stating

“[t]he winner of the Iranian protests was neither old media nor new media, but a hybrid of the two.”

What is curious though, is that neither opposition protestors nor Iran’s regime were in the running for

winner of the Iranian protests. Regardless of the Economist’s scorecard, the piece is yet another

indication that the focus of media coverage had shifted from a battle between protestors and the

regime to a tale about a revolution in journalism.54 “It all adds up to a story that’s being covered like

none before it,” opined Marisa Guthrie in Broadcast &Cable.55

In the hours and days during which the Excalibur narrative grew in popularity, older news media -‐-‐

television, radio, newspaper -‐-‐ embraced the new technology, creating and enhancing their Twitter

accounts and Facebook presences. Journalists, whose fingers already ached from the all the extra

blogging, were told they needed to start Tweeting as well. Politicians, celebrities, and athletes

incorporated social microblogging into their PR strategies and news organizations responded by

aggregating and writing about the abundance of content spewing from Twitterspace.56

Excalibur’s power to democratize news and perhaps the world felt real, but there was a problem. Not

everyone was using Twitter for good, and people were starting to take notice. From here a shift in the

narrative framework led to Act Three though there was certainly foreshadowing prior. A couple

humorous indicators from England stand out:

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First the ominous hyperbole found in the British trade publication Marketing, in which Andrew

Walmsey, founder of i-‐level media, wrote that what Twitter can do for marketers is what it’s doing for

the State Department, giving us a direct connection to what real people are saying about the things that

matter.57 Then there was the apology, on June 24 from a British furniture store after keywords relating

to the Iranian unrest appeared in Twitter ads offering coupons for the store. These are exactly the kind

of bombastic tales that often indicate the media is flying too close to the sun and is too exuberant to

care.

Act Three: Icarus Rhymes with Hubris

In Greek and later Roman mythology the story of Icarus serves as cautionary tale about the dangers of

hubris and flights of fancy. According to legend, Icarus was the son of Daedalus, an Athenian craftsman

who fashioned wings for his son made of feathers and wax so that they might escape from Crete.

Despite his father’s warnings about not flying too close to the sun, Icarus became giddy soon after

takeoff soaring higher and higher. Predictably, the sun melted the wax of his wings and the feathers fell

off, leaving Icarus flapping only his arms. Being a mere mortal human, he fell back to earth, crashing into

the sea.58

Within the context of the Twitter Revolution myth cycle, Icarus’s tale is reflected in the criticism by

scholars and media analysts of the mainstream media’s reporting (Act One: David vs. Goliath) and it’s

aggrandizement of the new technology (Act Two: Excalibur’s Power). For the purposes of this

framework, the wings are symbolic of Twitter et al., Icarus of the press, and Daedalus of the media

critics. Analysis of the writings in journals, trade publications, and broader commentary reflects a close

similarity to the original myth, in that Twitter et al. was not directly faulted but its reckless use by the

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media was. The Third Act of the myth cycle at times lauds the new technology but proffers caution that

it is not a panacea but instead a double-‐edged sword. This serves as the familiar parental lesson that

there are no shortcuts around hard work.

Daedalus (the journal, not the father of Icarus) laments that the digital revolution “brought liberty and

plenty to the system of free expression, and yet at the same time it subverted journalistic discipline and

the fragile sense of order offered by the mosaic of the newspaper page.”59

Chastising the overemphasis during Act One, scholar Babak Rahimi states that it was “because of this

narrow prism that the role of new technologies as a medium of communication for the protest

movement was somewhat exaggerated.”60 Or, as Zelizer put it: “Good stories often come at the expense

of good journalism.”

“Ironically, the main entity responsible for this kind of media production of knowledge was the Islamic

Republic itself, which by limiting access created the conditions for the Western media to create a

narrative of the crisis that haunts the hardliners in power to this day. But while they gave such coverage

as there was more impact, the new media sources did nothing for its sophistication.” Even the

archetypes in the David and Goliath Act may have been inaccurately portrayed in the western media’s

hurry to make sense of the nuance. As Babak points out the election in Iran was not so much about

secular urbanites fighting rural religious hardliners but in fact an internal religious struggle by the

opposition who opposed the secular corruption of the Ayatollah. “That’s the story that the Western

media are going to have to catch up to.” 61

Evgeny Morozov, a Belarusian journalist and Fellow at the Open Society Institute, has an even harsher

review of the Excalibur Act. “The impact of Twitter as an organizational tool or rallying cry for Iranian

revolutionaries has been grossly overstated,” he writes. “There were fewer than 20,000 Twitter users in

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Iran before the protests started. And while that number increased exponentially during the protests, the

spike is most likely the result of a concerted effort of foreign supporters to change their Twitter

locations to Tehran, Iran, to mask the real Iranian Twitter users who were feeding information to the

outside world.” Nonetheless during “the first days after the protests, it was hard to find a

television network or a newspaper (never mind the blogs) that didn’t run a feature or an

editorial extolling the role of Twitter in fomenting and publicizing the Iranian protests.”62

As to a journalistic revolution, technology commentator Stephen Cass is skeptical. “Some enthusiasts

believe that such media will render traditional news outlets obsolete” however MSM sites “still draw

hundreds of millions of visitors each month (see "Convergence Is King," p. 66). In large part this is

because media organizations assign stories to journalists -‐-‐ who should be better informed and more

articulate than the average blogger… which rely heavily on reputation to distinguish themselves in the

market, are also accountable in a way that often anonymous citizen journalists are not.”63

Moreover, the giddiness for the new technology allegedly caused some journalists to turn their back on

their profession. “The Iran protest story was different because amateur content took center stage,”

writes Barb Palser, director of digital media for McGraw-‐Hill Broadcasting Co. “Many news

organizations-‐-‐particularly broadcasters, who rely on photos and video-‐-‐were forced to use unverified

user content or nothing at all. In a situation as opaque and politically charged as this one, that choice

raises some questions.”64

#WhaleorTale?

This line of castigation by scholars and critics implies that news organizations were not merely lazy or

negligent in putting immediacy ahead of accuracy but in fact reckless. They directly disobeyed their

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training, flying toward the sun with little regard for the profession’s well being. Within the narrative

framework, western media first assumed the archetype of David and Goliath because it was an easy way

to tell a complex story. Through this simplification it neglected to investigate the extent to which David

was using his sling. Then, when the sling became the media’s only source of information, writers and

editors aggrandized its role further, growing the Excalibur to such a vaulted status that the U.S. State

Department gave Twitter an HT. This further inflamed Iranian leaders who condemned Facebook and

Twitter for waging a “psychological and propaganda war” against Iran.65 In 2009, Khamenei compared

crowdsourcing to a nuclear bomb. Now it appears he has joined the arms race having launched his own

Twitter page to compete with the opposition movement.66

Perhaps the Christian Science Monitor should retract their nomination of Twitter for the Nobel Peace

Prize?67 Further complicating the issue in the opinion of anthropologist, Michael Fischer is that

“[a]lthough the new social media have been crucial for the decentralized initial successes of the Green

Movement, it is not clear that the state monitoring and filtering efforts have not been equally

successful.”68

Indeed it seems that Daedalus has much to gripe about, but then again isn’t that his job? Media critics

exist to point out and reign in the irrational exuberance that sometimes takes overtakes journalists

especially during critical moments. Without that check the profession would ride roughshod and it is

therefore an implicit and necessary component of the analysis process and the overall narrative of

journalism.

Steiner

Three-‐Act Myth Cycle as a Trend Story

The “Twitter Revolution” is only the latest in a list of critical incidents, the latest of which might be the

Wikileaks dump. Certainly it shares similarities to the First Gulf War, when CNN’s coverage changed the

way we watched news.69 Additionally the Velvet Revolution (fax machines), the terrorist attacks of

September 11th (online news) and the Virginia Tech shooting (blogs and cellphones) were moments

when new technologies and a critical incident caused journalists to examine the conventions of the

profession. A deeper examination of their historical context is still necessary, but Act Three of the myth

cycle must be included as part of the framework for analyzing such revolutionary events.

Postscript

Like the coverage of the events surrounding the 10th Iranian election, this essay generalizes. The

assumptive nature of using narratives and archetypes distils and by so doing sacrifices detail for

portability. This essay does so in order to fashion a framework general enough to apply to other critical

incidents in the hopes of enhancing understanding and furthering discussion. If that goal has been met,

then the sacrifice of detail is not only relevant to the thesis but justified for its future application.

Steiner

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