This was a video that went viral during the "green revolution" in Iran. It demonstrates the use of YouTube in political activism and organizing.
For Neda, a feature documentary HBO released in 2010 about the life and death of the woman "who became the iconic symbol of Iran's 2009 post-election protests and struggle," tells her personal story and gives some background for the "revolution," thus providing context that a one-minute fragment of documentation can not.
Video and film have been used throughout their history to
witness and
document atrocities of those in power, as well as
"people's history" of utopian political moments.
Iran's revolution on film: "When millions of Iranians flooded the streets in June 2009 to protest the disputed election, it was all recorded—on video cameras and cell phones. For the West, these grainy amateur images were the only witness to the uprising and the brutal crackdown."
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A phenomenon allowed by Web 2.0, viral video has been of equal fascination to scholars like the
Convergence Culture Consortium at MIT,
marketers,
and users alike.
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