Decoding political field on Persian Twitter: Analyzing political activism by Iranian users during Iran’s 2017 presidential election

Document Type : .

Author

PhD in Communication Sciences, University of Tehran

Abstract

In this study, I propose the idea of political field on Persian Twitter. Based on Bourdieu’s field theory, I argue that political activism on Twitter caused the emergence of an imaginary field on this microblogging network. Analyzing political field on Persian Twitter could help us to reach a better understanding of Iranian users’ political participation and activism. In order to do this, I combined social network analysis, ethnographic content analysis and social media critical discourse study approach. The research sample was consisted of 10416 tweets of the 150 most influential users in three networked publics which were collected during Iran’s 2017 presidential election. Results showed that the struggle on power on Persian Twitter is mainly about everyday matters and election-related debates. Moreover, political field on Persian Twitter is not a site for challenging hegemonic values and producing new ones, it is a sphere to use existed values to overcome political rivals.

Keywords


استونز، راب؛ (1390)، متفکران بزرگ جامعه شناسی، ترجمه مهرداد میردامادی، تهران: نشر مرکز، چاپ هفتم.
کرمانی، حسین ( 1398) روایت و شکل گیری آن در توئیتر فارسی؛ تحلیل شیوه های داستانگویی کاربران ایرانی در توئیتر در جریان زلزله کرمانشاه، فصلنامه زبان شناسی اجتماعی.  دوره 3، شماره 1. صص 57-74.
 
Altheide, D. L., & Scheneider, C. J. (2013). Qualitative Media Analysis (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.
Ansari, A. (2012) The role of social media in Iran’s Green Movement (2009- 2012), Global Media Journal (Australian Edition). 6 (2).
Bamberg, M. (2012). Narrative Analysis. In H. Cooper (Ed.), APA handbook of research methods in psychology. Washington, DC: APA Press.
Bamberg, Michael, & Georgakopoulou, A. (2008). Small stories as a new perspective in narrative and identity analysis. Text & Talk, 28(3), 377–396. https://doi.org/10.1515/TEXT.2008.018
Barnard, S. R. (2016). “Tweet or be sacked”: Twitter and the new elements of journalistic practice. Journalism, 17(2), 190–207. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884914553079
Barton, D., & Lee, C. (2013). Language online: Investigating digital texts and practices. Abingdon: Routledge.
Bennett, W. L., & Segerberg, A. (2012). THE LOGIC OF CONNECTIVE ACTION. Information, Communication & Society, 15(5), 739–768. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2012.670661
Berger, P. L., & Luckmann, T. (1991). The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. London: Penguin Books Ltd.
Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Boyd, D. (2011). Social Network Sites as Networked Publics: Affordances, Dynamics, and Implications. In Papacharrissi, Z. (EDs) Networked Self: Identity, Community, and Culture on Social Network Sites, pp. 39-58.
Bruner, J. S. (2002). Making stories: Law, literature, life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Bruns, A. (2008). Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life and Beyond: From Production to Produsage. New York: Peter Lang.
Dalton, R. J. (2006). Citizen politics: Public opinion and political parties in advanced industrial democracies (4th ed.). Washington, DC: CQ Press.
Dayter, D. (2015). Small stories and extended narratives on Twitter. Discourse, Context and Media, 10(2012), 19–26. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2015.05.003
Easley, D., & Kleinberg, J. (2010). Networks, Crowds, and Markets: A Book by David Easley and Jon Kleinberg. In Book. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511761942
Ems, L. (2014). Twitter’s place in the tussle: how old power struggles play out on a new stage. Media, Culture & Society, 36(5), 720–731. https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443714529070
Entman, R. M. (1993). Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm. Journal of Communication, 43(4), 51–58. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1993.tb01304.x
Fairclough, N. (1995). Media discourse. London and New York: E. Arnold.
Georgakopoulou, A. (2007). No Small Stories, Interaction and Identity. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Georgakopoulou, A. (2014). Small stories transposition and social media: A micro-perspective on the ‘Greek crisis.’ Discourse & Society, 25(4), 519–539. https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926514536963
Georgakopoulou, A. (2016). Small Stories Research: A Narrative Paradigm for the Analysis of Social Media. In L. Sloan & A. Quan-Hasse (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Social Media Research Methods (pp. 266–281). London: SAGE Publications Ltd. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781473983847.n17
Hermida, A. (2010). TWITTERING THE NEWS: The emergence of ambient journalism. Journalism Practice, 4(3), 297–308. https://doi.org/10.1080/17512781003640703
Himelboim, I., Sweetser, K. D., Tinkham, S. F., Cameron, K., Danelo, M., & West, K. (2014). Valence-based homophily on Twitter: Network Analysis of Emotions and Political Talk in the 2012 Presidential Election. New Media & Society, 1461444814555096-. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444814555096
Hooshmand, K. (2015, July). “Soft Power” and its manifestations in international diplomacy. CGCS Media Wire. Retrieved from: http://www.global.asc.upenn.edu/soft-power-and-its-manifestations-in-international-diplomacy/
Hopke, J. E. (2015). Hashtagging Politics: Transnational Anti-Fracking Movement Twitter Practices. Social Media + Society, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305115605521
Kadushin, C. (2002). Introduction to Social Network Theory. Networks. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-2254-9
Khazraee, E. (2019). Mapping the political landscape of Persian Twitter: The case of 2013 presidential election. Big Data & Society, 6(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951719835232
KhosraviNik, M. (2017). Social media critical discourse studies (SM-CDS). In J. Flowerdew & J. Richardson (Eds.), Routledge handbook of critical discourse studies (pp. 582–596). London: Routledge.
Labov, W., & Waletzky, J. (1997). Narrative Analysis: Oral Versions of Personal Experience. Journal of Narrative and Life History, 7(1–4), 3–38. https://doi.org/10.1075/jnlh.7.1-4.02nar
Marchant, J., Ormson, T., Honari, A., & Sabeti, A. (2018). #iranvotes2017: Analysing the 2017 iranian presidential elections through Telegram, Twitter and Instagram. London.
Marchant, J., Sabeti, A., Bowen, K., & Kelly, J. (2016). # IranVotes: Political Discourse on Iranian Twitter during the 2016 Parliamentary Elections. Retrieved from https://smallmedia.org.uk/work/iranvotes
Meraz, S., & Papacharissi, Z. (2013). Networked Gatekeeping and Networked Framing on #Egypt. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 18(2), 138–166. https://doi.org/10.1177/1940161212474472
Moghanizadeh, S. (2013). The role of social media in Iran’s Green Movement. University of Gothenburg. Retrieved from https://gupea.ub.gu.se/bitstream/2077/34206/1/gupea_2077_34206_1.pdf
Morozov, E. (2009). Iran: Downside to the “Twitter Revolution.” Dissent, 56(4), 10–14. https://doi.org/10.1353/dss.0.0092
Ochs, E., & Capps, L. (2001). Living Narrative: Creating Lives in Everyday Storytelling. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Papacharissi, Z. (2014). Affective Publics: Sentiment, Technology, and Politics. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107415324.004
Patterson, M., & Monroe, K. R. (1998). Narrative in Political Science. Annual Review of Political Science, 1(1), 315–331. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.polisci.1.1.315
Putnam, R. D. (2000). Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.
Rainie, L., & Wellman, B. (2012). Networked: The New Social Operating System. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
Sadler, N. (2018). Narrative and interpretation on Twitter: Reading tweets by telling stories. New Media & Society, 20(9), 3266–3282. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444817745018
Sadler, N. (2018). Narrative and interpretation on Twitter: Reading tweets by telling stories. New Media & Society, 20(9), 3266–3282. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444817745018
Saldaña, J. (2015). The coding manual for qualitative researchers. London: SAGE.
Skocpol, T. (2003). Diminished democracy. From membership to management in American civic life. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Spiegelberg, H. (1991). The Phenomenological Movement. Dordrecht, The Netherlands.: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Swartz, David. 1997. Culture and Power: The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.
Vissers, S., & Stolle, D. (2013). The Internet and new modes of political participation: online versus offline participation. Information, Communication & Society, 4462(July), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2013.867356
Warde, A. (2004). Practice and field: revising Bourdieusian concepts.
Wodak, R., & Meyer, M. (2016). Methods of Critical Discourse Studies (3rd ed.). London: Sage.