Abstract
An attempt is made to study the social network site, Vahid Online, pseudonym of a leading Iranian activist who has the largest social media followership online. Vahid Online is Iran’s leading distributor of information about social and political news about Iran, a source of information used by citizens and journalists. Similar to Twitter, Vahid Online posts, shares, and communicates news in short messages with hyperlinks, hashtags, or internet slang for multimedia purposes. In this networking media space, citizen journalism is assumed the civic responsibility of news and information dissemination with a perceived conception of internet as an agency of change. Vahid Online, I argue, is representative of an individuated networking activism in the new technology for information production. Technology, likewise, is imagined as a political agency and, in turn, citizenship is redefined through technology that carries the promise of change. It is also argued that Vahid Online’s conception of citizen journalism is directly born out of the Green Movement in 2009, a protest movement against the 2009 presidential elections with a self-image of networked citizenship with a relative reliance on a weak tie model of civic association. The notion of citizen journalism examined here is one of civic participatory activism in archiving the collection, reporting, and dissemination of news through the merging of diverse media technologies in an attempt to create and distribute the most impact spreading news. The paper finally offers a critical analysis and argues that Vahid Online is more about individuated network framing of a privileged politics through practice of new technology.
Highlights
In the wake of the Zapatista movement’s use of Web in the 1994 uprising, studies of social movements and their intersection with the internet flourished as scholars turned to the way online political activism can shape new forms of dissent [1]
At the heart of online activism lay the ability of individuals and organizations to disseminate, organize, and creatively engage in contentious politics staged in mediated ways
With Telegram, the most popular instant messaging app in Iran, with 20 million users, Vahid Online has served as the main media hub for spreading social and political news deemed by the U.S.-based internet activist pertinent to an Iranian audience [39]
Summary
In the wake of the Zapatista movement’s use of Web in the 1994 uprising, studies of social movements and their intersection with the internet flourished as scholars turned to the way online political activism can shape new forms of dissent [1]. Sci. 2016, 5, 77 the transformative dimension is the greater ability to have control over exchange, production, and consumption of information to interact with intensifying global patterns of interconnectivity In such an increasingly networked political sphere where citizens confront risk and uncertainty of the nation-state in respect to shifting transnational ties, the internet opens up opportunities to make, and undo, radical changes, changes that have become manifest in the formation of new social relations online [3]. A “People’s Choice Winner” and described by the Bobs (Deutsche Welle awards) as a leading online activist to follow, Vahid Online is one of Iran’s leading distributors of information about social and political news about Iran, and, similar to Twitter, a source of information used by citizens and journalists in producing an “ambient” news site of open source nature [4] Such media space has relied on a perception of citizen journalism that involves the civic task of dissemination of news and information with the view of the internet as an agency of change. My discussion on Vahid Online in the final section of this study revolves around transnational connections in diaspora form, and the contours of convergence culture on multiple media outlets that identify the popular social media site in terms of civic politics of an alternative type
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