Discourse Formation of Political Dissents via Twitter: Political Sociology of the Subversion Discourse in the Islamic Republic of Iran

Abstract

Four decades after the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the rise of the Islamic Republic (IR) system, several anti-IR groups have emerged. In the past, the disorganized structure of these groups, their flaws, and dissonance over a common criterion to support or oppose IR and its activities posed some obstacles to their unity. However, over the last decade, they have reached consensus over the subversion of the IR. As a decentralized and disorganized social movement emerging in the wake of 2017 and 2019 protests, this discourse has gained momentum among the political activists, and more people are joining this trend every day, and it is very popular on Persian language social media, especially on Twitter. Loss of faith in the reforms of the IR is one of the issues upon which this discourse movement has reached a general consensus. By exploring and describing the main signifiers of the disorganized subversion discourse in Iran, the article seeks to identify its major characteristics through the qualitative-descriptive analysis of Farsi Twitter content. The research method was the content analysis of Farsi Twitter hashtags of the most popular user accounts belonging to the subversive movement in Iran by extracting the main signifiers and their discourse analysis to examine the main characteristics of the subversion discourse in Iran after 2017.