# Clay Shirky: How social media can make history

While news from Iran streams to the world, Clay Shirky shows how Facebook, Twitter and TXTs help citizens in repressive regimes to report on real news, bypassing censors (however briefly). The end of top-down control of news is changing the nature of politics.

- Kind: Talk
- Year: 2009
- Runtime: 15 min
- By: TED.com
- Genres: Education, Science, History
- Archive: [Internet Archive](https://archive.org/details/ClayShirky_2009S)
- Licence or status: [CC BY-NC-ND 3.0](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/) (as the archive states it)
- Who can watch: Tweens profiles and older (the archive gives no rating; placed by Invisible Network from its collection and subjects)

[Watch now](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/watch/archive/ia/ClayShirky_2009S?play=1)