Leading opposition leader, Mir-Hussein Mousavi‘s Facebook boasts 126,000 fans and has been an important platform to communicate Mousavi‘s messages to his Green Movement supporters and the world at large. Mohammad Sadeghi, founder and head administrator of Mir Hossein Mousavi’s and Zahra Rahnavard’s (Mousavi's wife) supporters’ Network on Facebook, shares with Global Voices his views on citizen media and the role of social networking, its impact and the challenges it faces in Iran today. Please tell me when and why Mousavi's Facebook group has been launched and what has been your role? The page has been launched the day before the inauguration ceremony of Barak Obama on January 19th 2009. I founded this page as I had personal sympathy for Mr Mousavi since long time ago. As one of the most efficient political figures in the history of the Islamic republic, he has had one of the best track records in terms of management abilities handling the most difficult times and tasks of the and his unique position as a “conservative reformer”. The period where he has had the position of Prime minister, Iran was experiencing one of the hardest times facing the 4th biggest army of the world. Eight years of resistance was foremost and above all a question of logistics and management of scarce resources. During this time, he had worked with the most famous political figures who later on have been known as “reformers”. For instance, former reformist president Khatami has been the minister of culture and Islamic guidance in his cabinet. I considered him therefore as the best chance for basic reform in Iran. Even during his time of silence, he has always spoken out strongly in critical situations such as for the flop of the bill of press law reform and fraud evidences in the 9th presidential election five years ago. In each of the last four presidential elections, he has been asked by key reformist figures to stand as a candidate but he always refused. Considering all these facts, it was obvious to me that in case he stands up, Iran is going to stand up with him, even those who might not know about his track record. The only question then would be that of an effective system of media communication for his campaign. Why do you think the Iranian government decided to let Iranains have access to Facebook, YouTube and several other sites before the election? The middle class turned out to be the greatest problem of the populist government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The think thank of his government has targeted the lower classes of the society who indeed have been disregarded in terms of being effectively addressed by the previous governments. Since the beginning of his first period of office, he began the systematic destruction of the institutional fundamentals of democracy like non-governmental organisations, as well as planning and controlling authorities, trying to monopolize the political system and eliminate political competition. The most important rival of this group have been the representatives of the middle class as his fiscal policy dominance weakened the private sector and caused a remarkable rise of inflation. As a result, the economic existential ground of the middle class has been seriously threatened by this government. One of the only ways to keep the middle class busy and quiet was to carefully allow them creep into virtual platforms with the least potential of mobilizing. At that time, the power of these platforms as a mobilizing tool was not yet proven. The short history of virtual networks at that time did not include any kind of effective social activities and other than commonplace and sometimes trite entertainment. I think that the access to Facebook, YouTube and similar virtual platforms was a part of a multilateral policy aiming to humiliate and distract the middle class from real social participation and politically relevant interconnection. A process innovation What is the role and impact of Mousavi's Facebook group in the Green Movement so far? Do you think citizen media activities slowed down in recent months? I would summarize the impact of Mousavi’s Facebook group as a “process innovation” to incorporate existing social network platforms into the Persian language media bandwidth. The Persian language media, which was limited to printed media and voice/motion picture broadcasters controlled by political authorities, experienced the first revolution during the time of the 1979 revolution. Inspired by the nightly newspaper movement during the time of the constitutional revolution in Iran (1905-1911), the Shah’s opposition movement exhausted the capacities of the printed media to the extent of wall writings.