The foreign media in Iran are facing sweeping restrictions, with official permission needed to attend or report on demonstrations.

With traditional forms of communication blocked, Iranians are using technology to keep the world informed about events.

Middle East political and security analyst James Spencer told the BBC: “As foreign correspondents find their work restricted and their visas curtailed, the ubiquity of the mobile phone… is coming to the fore.

“The ability to send graphic, near live-time footage, often then uploaded to YouTube elsewhere, is an incredibly powerful tool.“This raw imagery has little need for translation or editing, and often under-cuts the State’s message, both in content, and by pre-emption.”

He added that tags like “IranElection” on the social networking site Twitter have attracted huge numbers of “followers”.

These tweets often reference a YouTube clip or a URL, thus further increasing the audience, he said.

A YouTube spokesperson said there had been an increase in activity for all types of videos related to the Iranian election.

People were turning to the video-sharing website to get the latest from people on the ground who had “uploaded their experiences live and in the midst of the action”, the spokesperson added.

BBC Persian TV received scores of amateur videos after street protests against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election last week.

The BBC is currently receiving around five videos a minute, with hundreds more appearing on YouTube, Facebook and other social networking sites.

Here, footage shows pro-government militia firing shots at a rally in Tehran.

This video shows students, some wearing masks, holding a secret rally at Tehran University, where they call on President Ahmadinejad to resign.

In another recording, a student at Tehran University claims he and other protesters were attacked by pro-government militia.

And an Italian journalist used his mobile phone to capture footage of police in Iran using their motorbikes to charge at protesters on Sunday, in a bid to break up a street rally.

A BBC Persian TV producer said most of the protest footage came from inside Iran but some was shot outside Iranian embassies in other countries.

“BBC Persian TV is being jammed by the Iranian government… but people are still sending us videos. They’re just doing it,” she said.

The channel’s website has also been blocked with filters but people are finding a way to unblock them manually with anti-filters, she added.

Although communication is very hard inside Iran, people’s e-mails are still working and that is how they are exchanging information,” she said.

“BBC Persian TV’s interactive programme is receiving about 3,000 e-mails a day, compared to around 100 a day before the elections.”

More than half of Iran’s population is aged under 25 and the BBC’s Gavin Hewitt said this younger, internet-savvy generation was rocking the centre of power.

He said the hundreds of images captured on their mobile phones were telling the story of this crisis.

“The protesters are sending blogs and using messaging services like twitter – it’s a virtual game of cat and mouse,” he said.

“As the state tries to control access to the internet portals so the protesters are sending messages to each other on how to evade the government portals.”

Since our last piece about the situation in Iran over the weekend, there have been some major developments. We made a deliberate decision not  to cover this story on a rolling basis; and for a few reasons:

• We’re a tiny blog that lacks the resource to do so

• There are plenty of others, including the citizens of Iran, doing it already and better than we ever could

• We want to avoid breathless, ‘fog of war’ commentary because things are moving fast and it’s easy to make blunders and misrepresentations. We want to stay focused on the bigger picture

That said,  it is becoming clear to us that the current behaviour of the ruling élite in Iran is, in the classic mould of recent events in Zimbabwe and Burma, strikingly redolent of the actions of a repressive régime that has pushed its people too far.

The defensive actions of the Mullahs (the ones with the real power in Iran) their militias and the Presidency – state-organised counter-demonstrations, bussing protesters in from remote provinces, signs which look like they were made from templates blaming foreign media, firing at will into crowds, initiating heavy reporting restrictions (including curtailment of journalists’ visas) and curbing the movements of foreign media in-country – are reminiscent of Mugabe’s behaviour after the recent rigged elections there – if not quite as brazen.

We think on the basis of what we’re seeing that it is hard to conclude that the Iranian elections were free and fair.

However this turns out (and we fervently hope that events will lead ultimately to a change of régime for the people of Iran – and that’s one example of ‘hope and change’ that Obama doesn’t seem to interested in pursuing just now), the current one surely knows for certain that the genie is out of the bottle.

Citizens are using new technology to bypass the above restrictions. Camcorders, mobile phones, social media and citizen journalism, particularly through video via YouTube and micro-blogging via Twitter, which bring near real-time evidence of the régime’s brutality to the outside world.

We’re not going to be so naive or unrealistic to think that we can somehow be instrumental helping the Iranian people topple their brutal rulers, but we can assist in small ways:

Help spread the word – Follow #IranElection and #Iranvote on Twitter. Share videos from YouTube and other sites, use Facebook and other social sites to raise awareness.

Do your bit.

[Main story: BBC Online]

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