SMS Rally Iran Elections

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Hours before Iran’s disputed June 2009 presidential election, the country’s SMS network was shut down nationwide, cutting off a channel reformist candidates and their supporters had been using heavily to organise and rally support. Bloggers and Twitter users in Tehran, including accounts linked to opposition candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi, reported that text messages would not send on any network hours before polls opened, with roughly 110 million SMS messages a day having been sent in the run-up to the vote, prompting speculation that the shutdown was intended to hamper opposition mobilisation as the government moved to restrict avenues for coordinating dissent.