Twitterers of the World, Unite!

“What are you doing?”

That now-familiar question to any 20-something Twitterer often elicits answers ranging from watching a sitcom to standing in a Starbucks queue. Today, however, for some Twitterers in the Eastern European nation of Moldova, the answer apparently is:

“We’re launching a peaceful anti-communist revolution!”

While international pundits have been thumbing through color swatches in anticipation of Moldova’s protests falling into the pattern of the Color Revolutions that swept Eastern Europe several years ago, young Moldovans themselves are angling to put their own name on their uprising – they’re calling it “the Orphans’ Revolution,” as one-third of all young Moldovans have parents who have gone to find work in other countries under the current communist regime – and they are using Twitter as an electronic organizing tool.

In fact, as The New York Times reports, Moldovan activists have created a searchable Twitter tag for anyone who wants to share their insights in Twitter’s 140 character bites or less. The thread provides helpful links to Amnesty International human rights sites, and – at the moment I am writing this -- offers and a lively bit of chat from one Twitterer to another asking if he or she is a member of the Moldovan intelligence service. The world has come a long way since 1991, when Russian pro-democracy activists hand-cranked their manifestos through fax machines to waiting media in the West.

Not to be outdone, old media outlets -- particularly in Russia, backer of Moldova’s communist regime – are working to put their spin on what’s happening in front of the parliament building in Moldova’s capital city of Chisinau. A headline in Russia’s RIA Novostni reads: “Attempted Revolution in Moldova Fails,” rushing to dash any media-fed frenzy that Moldova might overturn last Sunday’s election results which returned the communist government in power. TV station “Russia Today” rolled footage of what its commentator called the Moldovan “riots”, speculating that this was not the work of Moldovans but rather “right wing radicals” from Romania who had crossed the border to incite and agitate.

Several stories reported the raising of a Romanian flag above the Moldovan parliament, noting that Romania and Moldova were a single nation for a period preceding the Second World War and that many voices on both sides of the Romanian-Moldovan border openly discuss the possibility of re-unification. (The storyline is helped by the fact that the Moldovan flag is near-identical to Romania’s tri-color, save for a crest in the center panel.) Yet at least one grainy video clip seems to show two Moldovan policemen standing near the base of the flagpole, doing nothing at all to stop the Romanian flag-raisers – and feeding speculation that the Moldovan regime has its own reasons for the world to see the protests as a cross-border provocation, and not the home-grown manifestation of its Twittering Masses.

Coming on the heels of so much summiteering in capitals across Europe, what are governments making of Moldova’s protests? Neighboring Romania has dismissed out of hand Moldovan government statements that Romanians are responsible for stirring up the Moldovan masses. As for the United States, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said through her spokesman: "We’re calling on the parties to refrain from further violence and resolve their differences peacefully and through peaceful means."

That’s 131 characters, for anyone who cares to “twitter” U.S. policy to the kids huddled tonight outside the parliament building in #pman – Twitter-talk for Chisinau’s Piatra Marii Adunari Nationale.