Radio review: World Stories – Revolutions In Iran

There was an astonishing moment towards the end of World Stories – Revolutions in Iran (World Service). Afshin Dehkordi, a producer for the Persian language service, was investigating the role of media and technology at two revolutionary flashpoints in the country's recent history: 1979 and 2009. He spoke to campaigners from both struggles about how they used the media – tape cassettes played down phone lines in 1979; social networking sites in 2009 – but he also spoke to his mother. She explained how subversive political messages would be passed around informally in the late 1970s at any gatherings of family and friends: "Birthday parties, weddings, picnics, but we were always careful that no strangers were present, because we were afraid of secret police." Thirty years later, such radical messages are circulated on Facebook and Twitter. Its impact on Dehkordi's mother – as she watched footage on YouTube of young revolutionaries dying in 2009 – was devastating. "I was upset, I couldn't sleep; their faces were in my mind. I got ill," she said, her voice cracking as she revealed to her son that she had to undergo counselling, and now gets her news only from those old family networks. Dehkordi sounded shocked as he realised that, within the telling of one important story, he had stumbled upon quite another.