Hugo Chávez has taken on the United States and big business but he now faces a potentially even more formidable foe in Twitter.
The Venezuelan president's decision to close down dozens of radio stations as part of a crackdown on "media crimes" has provoked fury from human rights groups as an assault on free speech. The blog Caracas Chronicles dismissed the move as Orwellian.
It has also sparked a co-ordinated campaign on Twitter against under the hashtag #FreeMediaVE. As the social media news site Mashable points out, the Venezuelan government has been forced to respond to the stream of tens of thousands of critical tweets. It branded Twitter users as traitors.
Chávez supporters say "community media stations" show true freedom expression in Venezuela, in contrast to the privately-owned "conglomerates". They would no doubt bracket Twitter as such a conglomerate, and indeed many seem to be using the FreeMediaVE hashtag as an opportunity put out anti-Chávez propaganda. But the sheer volume of tweets against the media crackdown is difficult to dismiss.
Some fear that Twitter itself will be targeted in Chávez's crackdown. A proposal to channel all internet traffic through state-run servers could be an attempt to control the network, according to the Los Angles Times.
