Just last week, Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso dissolved parliament’s lower house and called for national elections 30 August. Yesterday the Cabinet declared that Twitter is banned from use in the upcoming election campaign activities.

The government made the decision to ban the use of Twitter during the upcoming House of Representatives election campaign in response to questions submitted by Kenzo Fujisue, a Democratic Party of Japan member of the House of Councillors.

Twitter is an Internet service which allows users to post and read “tweets,” text messages of up to 140 characters, on each others’ bulletin board.

The government stated that messages posted on Twitter would be deemed “literature and images” specified in the election law, and considered illegal when such online messages are used in campaign activities.

Twitter has been widely used by Iranian citizens during the chaos after the nation’s presidential election as means to exchange information on street protests. Recently, several world leaders, including the U.S. President Barack Obama, have been using Twitter to transmit information to the world.

Source: Mainichi Japan

Just this morning I attended a lecture on complexity which touched on social networking tools like Twitter. Its interesting to see how the Japanese government was so wary of this incredibly powerful internet tool.