TY - JOUR
T1 - Online Performance of Civic Participation
T2 - What Bot-like Activity in the Persian Language Twittersphere Reveals About Political Manipulation Mechanisms
AU - Honari, Ali
AU - Alinejad, Donya
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© Author(s) 2021.
PY - 2022/12
Y1 - 2022/12
N2 - In this paper, we reveal the understudied transnational dimensions of politically manipulative activity on social media. Specifically, we identify and investigate a bot-like Twitter network associated with the controversial organization of Iranian political exiles, the Mojaheddin-e Khalgh (MEK). Tracing and contextualizing the Twitter debate around women’s rights within the 2016 Iranian Parliamentary election, our analysis contributes to the scholarship on diaspora and digital media by drawing attention to the often-neglected potentials for non-state actors such as diaspora groups to make use of social media to promote political propaganda that advances militarist violence. We demonstrate how the MEK network’s “online performance of civic participation” is typical of a bot-net of weak influence inside Iran, but that the aims and extent of its influence can only be fully understood by situating it within a historical and transnational analysis of Iranian diasporic media and politics, one that takes complex US-Iran diplomacy dynamics into consideration.
AB - In this paper, we reveal the understudied transnational dimensions of politically manipulative activity on social media. Specifically, we identify and investigate a bot-like Twitter network associated with the controversial organization of Iranian political exiles, the Mojaheddin-e Khalgh (MEK). Tracing and contextualizing the Twitter debate around women’s rights within the 2016 Iranian Parliamentary election, our analysis contributes to the scholarship on diaspora and digital media by drawing attention to the often-neglected potentials for non-state actors such as diaspora groups to make use of social media to promote political propaganda that advances militarist violence. We demonstrate how the MEK network’s “online performance of civic participation” is typical of a bot-net of weak influence inside Iran, but that the aims and extent of its influence can only be fully understood by situating it within a historical and transnational analysis of Iranian diasporic media and politics, one that takes complex US-Iran diplomacy dynamics into consideration.
KW - diaspora politics
KW - international relations
KW - Iran
KW - political manipulation
KW - social media bots
KW - Twitter
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85119484107&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85119484107&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/15274764211055712
DO - 10.1177/15274764211055712
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85119484107
SN - 1527-4764
VL - 23
SP - 917
EP - 938
JO - Television and New Media
JF - Television and New Media
IS - 8
ER -