Medium of the decade

The Times newspaper nominated Iranian student protester Neda Soltan as their Person of the Year on Boxing Day. Soltan died at a protest against a rigged election in Iran, shot by a government militiaman.

In a previous age, her death might have gone unnoticed by the wider world, but we live in modern times. Any outrage, large or small, need only capture the public’s imagination to spread around the net like wildfire. It is good to know that a medium used so frequently for the trivial – take, for example, the current protest against Amanda Holden as presenter of Crystal Maze – can also be used for monumentally important issues such as this.

It was largely via Twitter that a short film clip of Neda Soltan’s death traveled the world, affecting people as it did so, and opening our eyes to the political situation in Iran. Truly, the Internet unites us. There is not a regime in the world now who can rest assured that it can act unseen, for where there are mobile phones, there is also now the ability to speak to the world.

That is why, for good or bad, for the way it has added to the democratization of debate, and for its accessibility to all people, we at Notting Hill Web Design nominate Twitter as the medium of the decade.