All Blog Posts from World Watch

The Iranian government has done an effective job of putting a veil over what is happening on the streets of Tehran. Yet, tech-savvy Iranians are finding ways to bypass the shutdown of cell phones and the Internet, passing Tweets, photos and videos to the outside world.

Because of restrictions placed on the media by Iranian authorities, radio and television outlets and Web sites searching for the latest news are sifting through tens of thousands of fragments — text messages, photos, videos and phone calls — that show up on Twitter, FriendFeed, YouTube, Facebook and other sites, trying to piece together a picture of what is happening on the ground in Iran.

The few foreign correspondents left in Tehran are confined to their hotel rooms and watched over by Iranian government officials. Without eyewitness reporting from journalists, nearly every fragment of information carries the caveat, "We can't confirm the authenticity of anything we are showing."

It remains unclear just how many people were in the streets of Tehran and other cities, or how many protesters were killed or injured. But despite the fragmentary nature of the information, a basic picture emerges.

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Even as the Iranian government clamps down on media access and makes it difficult to access Web sites such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, the Internet underground continues to transmit photos, videos and blog posts about the ongoing political drama surrounding the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Several sites are offering information on what is happening on the ground in Tehran, piecing together and triangulating data to create almost real-time snapshots of the scene in Tehran and other parts of the world. Of course, on the wild Web it's not easy to verify the authenticity of the information. Many of the sites and much of the chatter on the Internet that is attracting attention is questioning the legitimacy of the outcome of the Iranian election. With that background in mind, we have assembled and linked to some of recent video and images covering the aftermath of the election.

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It is certainly a case of the old being fused with the new, but will the Pope's partnership with Google be a match made in heaven? That's a question Catholics are asking as organized religion continues to expand its reach onto the Internet.

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The Israeli military is now posting video clips of Air Force strikes on militant targets in Gaza on YouTube. Israel is now using the digital video-sharing community to spread propaganda — as Islamic militants have done for years.

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