While watching the Iran protests play out online, I thought it would be interesting to map out some of the words being used on each side of the debate. I took recent statements from Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, then ran them through the word mapping tool Wordle.net. The results show the 100 most commonly used words by each.
Both men clearly wanted to talk about "revolution" and "people," though they were using the words in different contexts.
Words used in Ayatollah Khamenei's June 19th public statement.
Words used in Mir Hossein Mousavi's June 20th public statement.
Taking it a step further, I then went to Twitter and took the latest batch of tweets that referenced either #IranElection or #Neda, two of the most common phrases people are using to tag their tweets as being related to the protests. Neda is the name attributed to a young woman who appears to have been killed during one of Tehran's weekend protests. It appears she was shot by a sniper.
These clouds are a snapshot in time from the Twitterverse as it discusses the election and its aftermath.
Tag cloud for #IranElection.
Tag cloud for #Neda.
(Andy Carvin is NPR's senior strategist for social media.)
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