REPORT: Iran's election campaign dominated by social media

With the Iranian presidential election only days away, the campaigns of both Rouhani and hardline cleric Ebrahim Raisi, have launched a social media free-for-all unprecedented in Iranian political history.

By far the most popular social media outlet is Telegram, a chat service that is a niche player in most Western countries but has some 20 million users in Iran, according to a report by the Iranian Students' News Agency (ISNA).

Telegram allows users to set up “channels” to broadcast pictures, videos and other messages to a wide following. For Iranian reformers in particular, that offers a way to get out messages that otherwise would be thwarted by censorship.

Iran has a young, tech-savvy population: approximately 60 percent of the population of 80 million is under 30.