2012 Pandora Gold Beads

Iran's Pres Candidates Recognize the Web as a Go

Presidential candidates looking to make headway in a key youth demographic try to win votes with high-tech outreach through YouTube, Facebook and cellphone alerts.

But this isn't Washington http://www.pacharms-jewelry.us/  in November 2008. It's Iran, in the Persian calendar year 1388.

And it's a sign of a critical election heating up in an increasingly tech-connected society. In roughly one month, Iranian voters will decide whether President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad leaves office or sits for another four-year term.

More than 400 candidates registered to run against him, but three are in the spotlight: reformist cleric and former parliamentary speaker Mehdi Karrubi; pro-reform  Buy Pandora Charms centrist and former Prime Minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi; and conservative former Revolutionary Guards chief Mohsen Rezaie.

Of the three, Mousavi is seen as the strongest challenger and the most high tech. His campaign maintains a Facebook page and a Twitter account . A two-minute YouTube video plays up some of his credentials: revolutionary devotion, his experience in the Iran-Iraq War and his roughly 20-year absence from politics.

Relative to the competition, he's campaigning as a political outsider, bashing the Iranian equivalent of Beltway politics. Along with it, a firm branding of Mousavi as the political heir to liberal  Pacharms-jewelry President Mohammad Khatami, with the tagline on his profile picture that reads, "With Khatami, Vote Mousavi."

"Mousavi's campaign has been the most visible online. He has made the most of use of [technology], because he is appealing for the most part . That is, in large part, the point of his Pandora Beads  campaign's digital arm -- mobilizing the young, educated, urban youth that could hand Mousavi a victory June 12."They know many people who are going to bother to vote have access to the Internet," said Dr. Djaved Salehi-Isfahani of Iran's increasingly tech savvy leadership.

Salehi-Isfahani, a Brookings scholar and economics professor at Virginia Tech, sees Internet campaigning as an equalizer, more accessible to both candidates and voters than traditional news outlets."It's much cheaper to get the news through the Internet then to buy a newspaper. In addition everyone knows that [state] radio and television Pandora Gold Beads in Iran are pretty much monopolized by the conservatives, so it's very hard for reformist candidates to publicize their message. The Internet is more democratic," Salehi-Isfahani said.