Politics and online social world

It appears that governments are now taking social web more seriously and a deeper relationship seems to be forming between governments and social web.

For example, if we take the case of India and Iran.

In India during the recent elections, the political parties used the web to market themselves in the hope to reach out to the voters. This shows a participatory approach.

In Iran, the government has blocked Facebook prior to Presidential elections. This one points to a controlling approach.

The questions that emerge from this situation is:

1. What are these relationships between social web and governments?

2. How different are these relationships from those between mainstream media and governments?

3. What are the factors that define the relationship between mainstream media and governments? For example, what is it that made India’s political parties join and participate in the online social world? And what is it that the Iranian government finds threatening about the social web?