[Lol_Lolovici]

It's interesting that something that already happened at least once is suddenly much more interesting because it involves the Islamic world. This was done before in Moldavia (http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/04/inside-moldovas/) but it was not that interesting for the media then because it wasn't Muslims and nobody wanted to anger Russia at that moment.

[idlewords]

Moldova, not Moldavia. You've actually got it backwards - the Twitter angle was hyped pretty hard by the media during the Moldovan protests, even though only a small handful of protesters used the service. These kind of bromides about [information technology of the day] enabling a new kind of revolution are as old as the hills - I remember hearing similar stuff about fax machines/email during the Bosnian war - and typically have little to do with the actual messy reality, and a lot to do with wishful thinking. In the case of Moldova, press coverage died down fast because a) the election was contested in court and demonstrations stopped and b) some of the original demonstrations appear to have been a provocation by the government, which wanted an excuse to crack down. The situation got murky real fast, and with no more easy angle on the story, the Western press lost interest.

[Lol_Lolovici]

I don't understand what I got backwards. I was just pointing out that this is a very similar situation to that one (revolution, twitter, elections) and it has the same media buzz but with the added bonus that it involves a Muslim country hence the US media enjoys it more. Your points about that situation are valid of course but that was not what I was saying.

It's funny you should correct the way I wrote the country name. I know the proper name but I chose to write it like most English users would know it.