Content uploaded by Emad Rahmanian
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Emad Rahmanian on Jan 24, 2022
Content may be subject to copyright.
The Journal of Social Media in Society
Fall 2021, Vol. 10, No. 2, Page 344-372
thejsms.org
Page 344
The Enemy Narrative: How Authoritarian
Regimes Use Twitter to Oppress Public Opinion,
Evidence from Flight PS752
Emad Rahmanian
Department of Business Management, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
emad.rahmanian@ut.ac.ir
This research explores the Iranian state narrative
through Twitter after the flight PS752 incident. The
IRGC downed an airliner jet amid the tension with
America creating a narrative battle on social media
and social media users tried to counter this
weaponization of social media. Understanding this
weaponization might help the civil society in the
future. Information dominance in social media leads
to creatin of a state fabricated truth. To this end,
13517 tweets were scraped using the R program 14
days after the incident. After refining the tweet pool,
4947 tweets were used to identify the state
narratives. Thematic analysis and narrative
analysis are integrated to obtain a multidimensional
understanding. Four narratives are identified, the
enemy narrative, the intimidation narrative, the
threat narrative, and the fake news narrative.
Narratives’ functions and structures are also
discussed to present a better understanding of these
state narratives and how the Internet and social
media Are used as a weapon against civil society.
The findings reveal how social media might be used
to portray a desired propaganda narrative of reality.
Keywords: strategic narratives,political
narrative, social media, Twitter, Iran, Flight PS752
nternet and social media have changed the political climate in our world
drastically on an unprecedented scale. In Iran, social media, the internet, and
broadcasting channels are under the restricted control of the government. These
state-controlled media all are meant to impose the hegemonic political narratives
and political propaganda as needed. But the internet allows individuals to challenge the
state’s narratives by providing a platform to create a counter-narrative.
Unlike the common belief, some scholars are concerned that social media are
becoming a threat to freedom of speech and democracy (Tucker et al., 2017). Early use of
modern social media for political gains by people goes back to 2009 and Iranian Green
Movement in which the government shut down SMS and restricted the internet, therefore
social platforms such as Twitter and Facebook became the main tools of protestors for
I
Rahmanian
The Journal of Social Media in Society, Vol. 10, No. 2
communication and planning (Thieltges et al., 2018). But first government planned use
was in the Ukraine-Russia conflict, when Russia used social and international media to
shape international perceptions and narratives (Khaldarova & Pantti, 2016). Russia tried
to control public narratives by controlling internet discussion using echo chambers, bots
and fake accounts (Hoskins & O’Loughlin, 2015). Again in 2017-2018 in Iran, civil unrest
took place but this time platforms such as Telegram were the main tool for protestors.
After this, the government banned all social networks and applications except Instagram
and WhatsAapp. Finally, in 2019, the internet was shut down in Iran for one week leaving
Iran behind a curtain.
MEDIA BACKGOUND OF IRAN
Iran has always used media as a tool for oppression (International Federation for
Human Rights, 2020). The fully state-owned broadcasting service, the Islamic Republic of
Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), is under the heavy control of the supreme leader. From 1979,
IRIB has broadcasted trials, confessions, and narratives that portray oppositions and
dissidents as ideologically or morally corrupt or misled (IFHR, 2020).
Even recently in the early 2010s, state television was the main information source
for many Iranians. Wojcieszak et al. (2013) in an extensive study in four major cities of
Iran (Tehran, Mashhad, Tabriz, and Shiraz) found out that almost 96 percent of the
respondents (based on 1022 fully completed questionnaires) use TV as their main source of
information, 55 percent got their news from newspapers, and 51 percent relied on strong
interpersonal communications.
However, recent studies show that IRIB’s audience has shrunk significantly
(International Federation for Human Rights, 2020). Almost 73 million out of 82 million
Iranians have access to the internet and almost 64 million use mobile internet. Mobile
subscriptions include 124 million which is more than the population (Hootsuite, 2020).
According to this report, active social media users in Iran are about 47 million, which is
almost 57 percent of the population. Also, 50% of the population (42 million) are mobile
social media users. This study also indicates that half of the respondents use the internet
and not surprisingly, the news was the second use of the internet after community
(Hootsuite, 2020).
How authoritarian regimes use Twitter to oppress public opinion
346 | Fall 2021 thejsms.org
Hootsuite (2020) reports that despite the severe crack down on internet and social
media, in 2019 Iran had a 2.5 percent increase in mobile social media users (almost 1
million users) and a staggering number of 7 million users increase (18%) in active social
media users. The increase in active users of social media indicates that social media are
gaining prominence among Iranians. Therefore, considering this vast penetration of social
media among Iranians, controlling social media is of vital importance for the Iranian
regime.
The Iranian regime uses several methods to control the internet and social media:
blocking social media, blocking political, religious, or social contents, pro-regime
manipulations, detention of bloggers or users, killing of bloggers or users, and technical
attacks against government critics or human rights organizations (Shahbaz & Funk,
2019). Also, in 2019, for the first time, the internet was fully shut down. But in a more
subtle way, Iran tries to impose a state narrative of the reality.
Twitter as a Narratives Battleground
Narratives include symbolic actions that convey meaning and have sequences for
those who want to create, transfer, and interpret them and are related to both real word
and constructed world leading to action (Fisher, 1985). Usually, narratives speak on behalf
of the individuals but counter-narratives are selective and people use them to position
themselves in relation to hegemonic narratives (Frandsen et al., 2017). Counter-narratives
are stories that people tell to resist dominant narratives (Andrews, 2004). Counter-
narratives are alternate versions of reality and are defined in relation to narratives they
are countering (Frandsen et al., 2017). People on Twitter form narratives interpreting the
meaning of individual tweets in relation to a bigger picture or concept (Sadler, 2018).
Additionally, through collective action, people on Twitter form narratives. This formation
is by the repetition of keywords, hashtags, and connections established through retweeting
and liking (Sadler, 2018). Such platforms enable people with different or even conflicting
views to form a single recognizable narrative on a subject (Papacharissi, 2015).
Twitter is widely used by governments and is highly renowned for spreading fake
news and propaganda (Boshmaf et al., 2011) through bots and fake accounts. These
accounts are used to manipulate public opinion and narratives, polarizing people in the
political domain (Kollanyi et al., 2016). Analyzing social networks and their effects on
Rahmanian
The Journal of Social Media in Society, Vol. 10, No. 2
democracy and political debates and even armed conflicts is a growing field of research in
recent years, such as studies in France (Ferrara, 2017), Brazil (Arnaudo, 2017), USA
(Shao et al., 2017), Russia (Khaldarova & Pantti, 2016) and Iran (Thieltges et al., 2018).
The use of bots, echo chambers and suspicious accounts in today’s politics is indisputable
(Boshmaf et al., 2011; Ferrara et al., 2016). Governments use these methods to widely
spread political falsehood (Weeks, 2018). Furthermore, bots and suspicious accounts are
used as the main tool for online astroturf (or fake grassroots) in smear campaigns
(Woolley, 2018) and social spam campaigns and polarization (Ferrara, 2017).
Online political debates occur in an environment that is fundamentally different
from the offline world (Ho & McLeod, 2008). These discussions are anonymous
(Papacharissi, 2004) and public or semi-public (Wyatt et al., 2000). As politics become
more distinct on social media and partisanship has become a social identity, feelings
toward political opposition identifiers become more hostile (Tucker et al., 2018). This
polarization generates hostility towards political opposition (Huddy et al., 2015;
Abramowitz & Webster, 2016).
Narrative and the State
Politicians try to use narratives to pose a certain perception of a specific issue.
These strategic narratives are a means to shape the public perceptions and actions of the
domestic and international audience (Miskimmon et al., 2014). For example, state media
tries to refer to the Flight SP752 incident as a result of American electronic warfare and
blame it on American adventurism and intervention in the region (
The New York Times
,
2020; CBS News, 2020). This narrative is even spread by Mohamad Javad Zarif, foreign
minister of Iran via his official Twitter account which is illustrated in figure 1. This is not
the first time that Twitter is used to establish a fake strategic narrative. Iran used
Twitter, even after complete restriction of access for citizens, to impose the narrative that
Twitter is a propaganda machine established by USA and Israel, the enemies, to
overthrow the Iranian regime (Thieltges et al., 2018).
How authoritarian regimes use Twitter to oppress public opinion
348 | Fall 2021 thejsms.org
Figure 1
: Zarif’s tweet Mohamad Javad Zarif, foreign minister of Iran, using Twitter to reinforce the state
strategic narrative (Zarif, 2020)
Enemy and being under influence of the enemy, the USA in most cases, is one of the
most important discourses in the strategic narrative used by the Iranian regime. Doshman
(the enemy) is almost central to any Iranian strategic narrative. The enemy is ever-
present in narratives and shapes the state propaganda. The enemy is to blame for protest
all over Iran for fuel price hike (Malekian & Finnega, 2019), for the Ukrainian plane
incident, and for protest over economic demands (Cunningham, 2018).
Since 2001 and legislated by the Council of the Cultural Revolution (SCRC), Iran
enforces ISPs (Internet Service Providers) to employ some filtering systems. After the
disputed 2009 presidential election and the rise of social platforms, mainly Facebook and
Twitter, as tools of communication for protestors and dissidents, the government tried to
devise a response. First, it shut down mobile services and SMS during protests and after
the initial brutal crackdown, it filtered platforms such as Google Chat, Yahoo Messenger
and Viber. As the protest grew and became nationwide, Facebook and Twitter became the
most influential tools of communication for protesters. At this time Ayatollah Khamenei
directly addressed Twitter and Facebook as a means of American intervention in Iran’s
domestic affairs. As a response to this situation and considering the ineffectiveness of the
Rahmanian
The Journal of Social Media in Society, Vol. 10, No. 2
filtering strategy, government decided to change strategy and engage directly with social
media. The government’s main tactics on Facebook were:
1. Fake accounts: creating fake accounts to infiltrate users’ circles
2. Provocation: writing provocative comments to encourage responses and interactions
3. Monitoring and reporting: to spot and report trends and active users. (Article 19,
2017)
Again in 2017 and 2018 protests erupted all over in Iran due to economic situations
and issues. During this time, Telegram was the main platform for communication and
sharing and dissemination of information resulting in filtering the service. Again in 2019,
Iranians took to the streets due to the economic situations and a hike in gas price
overnight. This time the government completely shut down the internet for 7 days. This
shut down was ordered by the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) and imposed by
the Ministry of Information, Communication and Technology (ICT).
Since 2018, the Iranian regime has tried to duplicate their Facebook strategy on
Twitter. Like Russia, Iran uses bots and fake accounts to influence the narratives on social
media (Thieltges et al., 2018). There are official complex and multilayered structures in
the Iranian government in charge of controlling cyberspace. Organizations such as the
High Council of Cyberspace, Cyber Defense Command, and Iran’s Cyber Army are among
those set up after the first major use of social platforms and the internet by people in
2009.
Cyber Defense Command was set up in 2010 shortly after the 2009 civil unrest and is
under the supervision of the Passive Civil Defense Organization, which is a subdivision of
Joint Staff of the Armed Forces. The High Council of Cyberspace was established in 2012
by the direct order of Ayatollah Khamenei for instituting high-level policies on cyberspace.
Iran’s Cyber Army is another organization consisting of professional hackers and
specialist in IT. These organizations formulate campaigns to smear any group, person, or
narrative that is undesirable. According to the report by Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace (Stronski & Ng, 2018), they routinely focus on different internal
targets such as government officials, reformists, cultural and media figures, and many
more. This time the Iranian regime tried to pose state fabricated narrative on the shoot-
down of the Ukrainian flight by IRGC.
How authoritarian regimes use Twitter to oppress public opinion
350 | Fall 2021 thejsms.org
Ukrainian Flight Incident
On January 3, 2020, around 1 a.m. local time (22:00 UTC 2 January) American
drones attacked Baghdad International Airport and assassinated Qasem Soleimani,
Iranian major general in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Abu Mahdi al-
Muhandis, secretary-general of Kata'ib Hezbollah, the Iraqi militia. In retaliation, on
January 8th, Iran launched a ballistic missile attack on American Ayn Al-Asad Airbase
located in Erbil, Iraq, in an operation called “Martyr Soleimani”. According to American
sources, the attack started at 1:34 a.m. local time and ended by 4:00 a.m. local time. This
attack was reportedly telegraphed in advance through Iraqi intelligent forces and
undisclosed intelligence agents. This operation had no casualty except one, the Ukrainian
flight SP752. Ukraine International Airlines flight SP752 was an international flight from
Tehran to Kiev on January 8. At 06:12 local time (02:42 GMT), the flight took off from
Imam Khomeini International Airport and shortly after, the airliner, Boeing 737-800, was
shot down by Tor M1 surface to air missile (SAM) missile launched by IRGC resulting in
the death of all 167 passengers and 9 crews (Oliphant et al., 2020). First, there was
uncertainty about the cause of the crash.
Shortly after the news breaks out, a journalist comes up with a theory that the
plane was downed by an Iranian SAM missile mistakenly. His tweets are available in
figure 2. Gradually evidence begins to back up the theory, a picture of an exploded missile
head comes up. At this stage, although the theory seemed plausible, users cast doubts on
the missile theory either because there was not enough solid evidence to simply because it
was too shocking to be believed. But a video ended all debate, an unknown person filmed
the moment of missile impact on the plane. This video spread all over the country through
social media on an unprecedented scale. The tweet, which shared the video for the first
time, is presented in figure 3.
Rahmanian
The Journal of Social Media in Society, Vol. 10, No. 2
Figure 2
: Left: I have no doubt that the Ukrainian Boeing 737 was downed by Khatam-ol-anbia Command
1
which was in full alert as a foreign unidentified flight. I wrote in details (Gholipour, 2020a).
Right: Look at the food packaging, aren’t they the same? (Gholipour, 2020b)
Several scenarios were developed to explain the fatal incident. In one scenario, the
plane was shot down because Iran Air Defense Forces were at full alert and an operator
mistakenly launched the surface to air (SAM) missile. Another scenario accounts for the
notion that Iranian forces did not close the airspace to create a human shield as a
deterrent against possible American retaliation after operation Qasem Soleimani and fully
operational SAM missile detected the civilian plane as an enemy and shot it down.
Shockingly, finally it was revealed that not one but two missiles were launched on the
plane. For three days after the incident, no authority took responsibility. Finally, on 11
January, General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the Aerospace Force of IRGC, held a
televised press conference and admitted their full responsibility for shooting down the
plane with two SAM missiles, allegedly having it mistaken it for a cruise missile.
Meanwhile, during these three days, the propaganda machine understood the
necessity of immediate action to manipulate and distract people. State-backed accounts
tried to manipulate the public narrative by tweeting fake news and disinformation
campaigns. This article attempts to analyze the tweets and fake narratives to shed light
on the efforts to use strategic fake news to manipulate the public domain in favor of
How authoritarian regimes use Twitter to oppress public opinion
352 | Fall 2021 thejsms.org
political hegemonic narrative. This article studies the different aspects of the strategic
narratives imposed by the Iranian regime on the Ukrainian flight incident and to
categorize them to have a better understanding of the phenomenon.
Figure 3
: the video that shows the launch and impact of the missile (Gharib, 2020a)
METHODOLOGY
This study applies the Vaismoradi et al. (2013) and Floersch et al. (2010)
approaches to integrate thematic analysis and narrative analysis. Essentially, this method
provides a multidimensional understanding of state strategic narratives, whereby
thematic analysis and narrative analysis are applied to the same body of qualitative data
to illustrate how they make meaning.
Collection of Data
All the data used in this paper are public and publicly available and do not pose a
threat to any user’s safety or anonymity. To build the data set, tweets were scraped using
the R program. Data were collected 14 days after the incident, on 21st January. The eight
1
The Islamic Republic of Iran Air Defense Force (Persian: ) is a branch split from IRIAF that controls
Rahmanian
The Journal of Social Media in Society, Vol. 10, No. 2
most prominent hashtags (#) were used to scrape pro-regime tweets trying to fabricate
fake narratives. To increase the span of scraped tweets, hashtags in Persian and English
were chosen. A total number of 13,517 were scraped. Details of scraped tweets are
presented in table 1.
Table 1
Details of scraped tweets
Description
Hashtags
Number
of scraped
tweets
Total
number of
favorites of
scraped
tweets
Total
number of
retweets of
scraped
tweets
Total number
of mentions
of scraped
tweets
Hashtag in
Farsi
(English
translation)
#
(I am an IRGC
member too)
446
919
19307
74
#(flight
752)
2080
18637
163093
177
#(hard
revenge)
1026
4524
166659
309
Hashtags in
English
#HardRevenge
1904
2709
69283
1558
#IranPlaneCrash
1977
2873
487764
1218
#PS752
2071
4034
250607
656
#QasemSoleimani
2077
2794
332847
726
#sardarhajizade
1936
5080
42815
229
Total
13517
41570
1532375
4947
Please note the presented hashtags are not exhaustive. Hundreds of duplications
were found either by bots or by the cyber army, but for the purpose of this study, a small
sample was used to facilitate a qualitative analysis. Also, some hashtags were used both
by the people and by the cyber army. After collecting tweets, all English tweets were
removed. Also, tweets were searched and scanned for any duplication and possible
retweets with minor changes in the tweet, almost 9917 tweets were acceptable.
Furthermore, the body of tweets was scanned again to identify and remove tweets that
Iran's military land-based air defense established in 2008.
How authoritarian regimes use Twitter to oppress public opinion
354 | Fall 2021 thejsms.org
included our terms, but was not explicitly related to our topic of interest (e.g., “
(I’m longing for a revolutionary subway)”). At this stage, 4316 tweets remained.
Coding of Tweets
Atlas.ti version 8 was used to code tweets. All tweets are in Persian and in order to
be represented in the article, they are translated. Although in the previous section, tweets
were scanned for any irrelevant tweets, again they were searched to spot any irrelevant
tweets. The first fragments of tweets or a complete tweet were selected as “Quotes”.
Quoting helps the researcher to immerse in the data and spots any irrelevant tweets. This
process elicits a formatted body of text, which will be used in coding.
The second step is a critical step in methodology which includes selecting, coding,
and clustering. Selected quotes were revisited to select the final body of the quotes. Then
codes were assigned to the quotes. In a constant process of reading, rereading, and
comparison wording for codes were refined. In the next step, an organized assembly of
codes was drawn together allowing the researcher to create themes and draw a conclusion.
Finally, 40 codes were identified, and almost after coding one-fourth of the tweet,
saturation was reached.
Keyword Popularity
The most commonly used word is General () which is repeated 1498 times
followed by Hajizadeh ( ) which is used 1028 times. The next 8 words are revenge
(, 933 times), flight 752 ( , 597 times), Ghasem Soleimani ( , 444 times),
Sepah, which means corpse in Persian and is a shorter version of IRGC (, 384), Iran
( , 290 times), America ( , 271 times) and finally Ukrainian ( , 234 times).
Themes
Following Vaismoradi et al. (2013) and (Braun & Clarke, 2006), this study applies a
thematic analysis that tries to identify, analyze and report patterns (themes) within data
(Braun & Clarke, 2006, p. 79). After coding all the data, it was trying to search for themes
by collating codes into potential themes. The next step is reviewing and naming themes.
Themes are presented in figure 4 schematically and the results are presented in table 2.
Rahmanian
The Journal of Social Media in Society, Vol. 10, No. 2
Figure 4
: Themes and codes. Direct export from Atlas.ti
Table 2
Thematic analysis results
#
Theme
Codes
Example (in Persian)
Example (English
translation)
1
America
• Attack on Ein-Al-Assad
• End of America's
intrusion in ME
• Trump assassination
• Trump's trial
Trump will not die of natural
causes.
2
attack on
citizens
• accordance with enemy
• arresting citizen
journalists
America is dividing people
and some people with
western mindset think west
love us. America does
anything to make that
country great even calling
our Generals terrorist.
3
attacking the
elected part
of the
political
sphere
• attacking elected
politicians
• Undermining the elected
President
It seems that President
Rouhani will force General
Hajizadeh to take
responsibility for WWI and
WWII so some don’t get
upset.
How authoritarian regimes use Twitter to oppress public opinion
356 | Fall 2021 thejsms.org
4
blame policy
• Blaming America
• Blaming celebrities
• Blaming Iranian
government
• Blaming Israel
• blaming people
• blaming UK
Now that the role of America
and Israel and the non-
insider and infiltrators in
shooting down the plane and
irresponsibility of Supreme
National Security Council
undeniable why we remain
silent?
5
Enemy
• accordance with enemy
• Enemy
Did you see the trick and
treachery and infiltration
network of the enemy? They
neutralized Soleimani
physically and now want to
remove Hajizadeh by an
elaborate conspiracy of
insiders and westernist.
6
fake news
• conspiracy theory
• Emphasizing on human
error
• exaggerating the
outcome of attack on Ayn
Al-Asad
• fake news
• Human error
• systematic fallacy
• systematic lying
Hajizadeh said if we
announced the incident
immediately it would have
compromised or defense
system and people’s security
7
infiltration
• Infiltration
• Insiders
• Israeli infiltration
We cannot overlook
electronic warfare and Israeli
8200 unit in sabotage though
it is not unprecedented.
8
insulting
civilians
• insulting celebrities
• insulting people
.
We don’t know what foreign
force were crushing us under
their boots. I totally
surrender to IRGC and
Leader. I swear to god that if
there is any problem in the
country it is because of
people incompetency.
9
praising
IRGC
• appreciation of IRGC
aerospace forces
• praising Hajizadeh
Praising IRGC
• praising Qasem
Soleimani
• sympathizing with IRGC
.
We saw error from your
defense force not treason. It
was not intentional.
10
Sexual threat
• Sexual harassment
• Sexual threat
! !
When ISIS attacked the
universities they separated
young girls and raped them!
If it was not for Soleimani
and Hajizadeh, your mother
and sisters were being
separated by ISIS to be
raped.
11
Threat
• Revenge
• threatening America
• threatening celebrities
• threatening American
forces
• threatening people
174 people do not even worth
it, 80 million people may die
for Islam and independence.
We owe Sepah much more.
Rahmanian
The Journal of Social Media in Society, Vol. 10, No. 2
FINDINGS
In the next step, themes are interconnected to create narratives. Using the Twitter
platform and tweets to understand political information war and narrative, especially in
the political domain, is not unprecedented. For example, Jones (2017) used Twitter to
examine the weaponization of social media and the nature of non-western propaganda in
the Persian Gulf Crisis in 2017. Also, Cunningham et al. (2015), tries to examine ISIS's
online presence and narrative on Twitter.
In order to find the narratives’ structure, it is imperative to ascertain how themes and
codes are intertwined to create a meaning of state strategic narratives and means of
oppression. Four types of the narratives were identified: intimidation, enemy, threat and
fake news.
The Intimidation Narrative
In this narrative, the main plot is to intimidate and silence people. This narrative
includes five themes: insulting civilians, praising IRGC, sexual threat, attack on citizens,
attacking the elected part of the political sphere. This narrative tries to dictate the
strategic narratives of the state by putting pressure at three levels: at a personal level on
civilians, at an organizational level by glorifying IRGC, and at the national level by
undermining the elective part of the Iranian political context.
The main purpose of this narrative is to increase the cost of criticizing for ordinary
people. Insulting and threatening other accounts on social media platform is a dominant
method for Iranian cyber army. By enforcing this narrative, those who are critics of the
Iranian regime are linked to foreigners and enemies. This tweet highlights the plot of this
narrative:
“
The only factor that harms the country and the regime is infiltration which is
followed by those mercenaries especially some celebrities”.
An important part of this plot is sexual threat and harassment, which have
destructive elements, given that Iranian culture is very conservative and traditional on
sexual matters. This agent provocateur, like strategy, entices people in online debates to
hostility which obliterates the original topic. For example, this tweet uses this narrative
plot to entice users:
How authoritarian regimes use Twitter to oppress public opinion
358 | Fall 2021 thejsms.org
You haven’t seen ISIS and sex jihad
2
, and haven’t seen your “namus
3
” is being sold,
and your wives and children are not raped in front of you. Brave General Soleimani
and Hajizadeh and IRGC
Celebrities, like other civilians, were under pressure. Considering their audience
and their role in spreading the information and news, in these narratives they are under
threat as well. This narrative sends a message to famous people like actors, directors, and
athletes that if they want to be able to work in Iran, they should keep silent. For example,
this tweet refers to people and celebrities who were tweeting about the incident as in
figure 5:
Figure 5
: The intimidation narrative network of themes.
“
These people are not comparable to the member of IRGC. These people hang out with
2
Arabic: , Romanized: jihad al-nikah, Persian: , Romanized: jahad ol-nekah) refers to the purported practice in which
terrorist group such as ISIS use willing Muslim women as sex slaves (Rinehart, 2019).
3
the concept recognized in some circum-Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, and Central and South Asian cultures
and usually translated as “honor.” One way to understand namus is to regard it as patrilineal sovereignty, particularly reproductive
sovereignty. After an “honor killing,” a “defense of honor” explanatory narrative is told by both perpetrator and community alike (King,
2008
Rahmanian
The Journal of Social Media in Society, Vol. 10, No. 2
traitor spy celebrities, they are hyenas and vultures and what they do is good for
nothing, I am a Sepahi”.
The other form of this narrative is glorifying the IRGC. Again, this plot tries to silence
other voices by praising and appreciating the IRGC at and extreme level and turn any
criticism into treason. To this end, a major plot of this narrative was appreciating IRGC
and its commanders, the major culprit of the incident. For example, this tweet might shed
some light (rough translation):
“General Hajizadeh I am so sorry that we couldn’t defend you against those who
can’t tolerate the unity of the people and your attack on the Untied State, you are
not alone.“
By this plot, the cyber army, while IRGC was under heavy criticism by Iranian people,
tried to change the direction of the twitter narrative from the demand of justice to “they
don’t deserve appreciation”. This narrative deviates users of social media from their true
cause and reduces their effort to denial or stating the obvious. Also, these efforts, puts
IRGC in such a high position that any criticism is the criticism of the regime itself as
stated in this tweet:
“I think we should deploy those insulting to IRGC to the border, or even Iraq, and these
are my suggestions: Mahmoud Sadeghi
4
, Mohamad Reza Aref
5
, Sadegh Zibakalam
6
,
Hessamedin Ashena
7
”.
This incident was a good opportunity for appointive parts of the Iranian political
sphere to fully attack those elected by the people. This plot is associated with a greater
strategic plot of the Iranian regime which promotes revolutionary ideology and tries to
prove the elective part ineffective.
The Enemy Narrative
This narrative is almost central to the ideology of the Iranian regime.In this narrative,
every problem is the outcome of enemy’s action which, based on the problem, could be
America, Israel or even Shah’s loyalists. The enemy narrative’s plot is four-fold:
4
Mahmoud Sadeqi is an Iranian lawyer, jurist, academic and reformist politician and former member of the Parliament of Iran
representing Tehran, Rey, Shemiranat and Eslamshahr electoral district.
5
Mohammad Reza Aref is an Iranian engineer, academic and reformist politician who was the parliamentary leader of reformists' Hope
fraction in the Iranian Parliament, representing Tehran, Rey, Shemiranat and Eslamshahr.
6
Sadegh Zibakalam is an Iranian academic, author and pundit described as reformist and neo-liberal.
How authoritarian regimes use Twitter to oppress public opinion
360 | Fall 2021 thejsms.org
infiltration, enemy, blame policy, and America. The enemy narrative’s networks is
depicted in figure 6.
The infiltration plot implies that when the Iranian regime fails at an organizational
level it is definitely due to a non-insider or infiltrator. Infiltration is either in IRGC which
led to shooting down the plane by infiltrator to defame IRGC or in elected government or
even the president himself:
“Hard revenge means cutting the hand Of America and its infiltrator such as Rouhani
from the region”.
“In these days be very careful about the infiltration network which is trying to change
people’s mind and create negotiation-revenge bipolarity in the grassroots”
“A few important questions: 1-whos said that cruise missiles are coming toward Iran?
2- Who is responsible for miscommunication between operator and command center? 3-
Who permitted the flight? 4-why the footage is presented by Nariam Gharib, Iran
International network employee for the first time? I smell treason”
This plot, systematically, tries to acquit IRGC of the shooting down the plane and
accuses others as the chief culprit. The purpose of this plot is to alter the online debates
from putting pressure on the regime and jurisdiction system to proving that IRGC
committed this crime. The enemy plot highlights the role of the enemy in the situation and
puts the spotlight on the others to hide the role of IRGC:
“Trump ordered the attack, so maybe shooting down the plane was part of their
plan”
Like other plots in the enemy narrative, blame policy is an effort to deviate
attention from IRGC to others countries like the UK and even Iranian people and
government.
7
Hesamodin Ashna is an Iranian politician and advisor to President Hassan Rouhani. He is also the head of Center for Strategic Studies.
Ashna is described to be in Rouhani's inner circle and associated with the Moderation and Development Party.
Rahmanian
The Journal of Social Media in Society, Vol. 10, No. 2
Figure 6
: The enemy narrative network of themes.
“
Although IRGC accepted the human error and apologized and promised compensation,
people still focus on the Ukrainian flight and make America and UK satisfied”
Since in the Iranian regime paradigm, America is the great devil, blaming America is
not unprecedented. Blaming America is the dominant narrative since the Islamic
Revolution of 1979. Here again, the cyber army tried to blame America for shooting down
the plane and linked the critics and users asking for justice to America:
“If the great devil was our friend, it didn’t suffer our people for years, didn’t impose
sanctions on us. If we are wise enough, we don’t show a green light to the enemy and
do not befriend him. The enemy is the enemy and those who take the enemy’s side are
getting paid by it”.
This tweet summarizes the core plot of this narrative: if you criticize the Iranian
regime, you are filled with envy. In conclusion, this narrative tries to position the enemy
as the culprit and silences critics by linking them to the enemy; you are either with us or
with the enemy.
How authoritarian regimes use Twitter to oppress public opinion
362 | Fall 2021 thejsms.org
The Threat Narrative
The main purpose of this narrative is to highlight the act of revenge and threat. The
revenge is directed towards America and the threat is aimed at Iranian people and
celebrities. As discussed previously, the Iranian regime uses the threat to choke any
dissident voice. The threat to attack America or hard revenge (), the exact word
used by the Iranian supreme leader, also is an effort to counter the anti-regime and anti-
IRGC user-made narrative prevalent on twitter. This narratives’ network is as in figure 7:
Figure 7
: The threat narrative network of themes.
Another function of this narrative is to encourage the supporters of the regime. After
IRGC took full responsibility and IRGC top-ranked officers visited the family of the
victims of the flight compulsorily, the cyber army tried to impose the “we will take
revenge” narrative:
“From this morning, no place on earth is safe for American terrorist forces, the dawn of
the victory is near”
“General Hajizadeh, while visiting the family of a victim of the flight, promised they
will avenge the blood of the martyrs of the flight from America”
Rahmanian
The Journal of Social Media in Society, Vol. 10, No. 2
Threatening dissidents, people, and other country is a major tactic that the Iranian
regime uses to oppress civil society. Whenever the Iranian regime is under pressure
internationally or internally, the threat is a weapon to silence people.
The Fake News Narrative
From the very first moment, the Iranian regime started to spread fake news. Different
fake news, systematic lying, conspiracy theory are among these fake news. The network is
presented in figure 8.
Figure 8
: The fake news narrative network of themes.
First, the cyber army tried to come up with a different theory for the crash. One of
these theories was since the price of petrol in Iran is extremely low, some passengers
smuggled petrol in their luggage. This theory first was circulated in messaging platform
such as Telegram and then reinforced by spreading through Twitter, referring to Telegram
as the reference. An example is provided in figure 9.
How authoritarian regimes use Twitter to oppress public opinion
364 | Fall 2021 thejsms.org
Figure 9
: Left: the news circulating in Telegram platform, English translation: is the secret of Ukrainian
flight crash in the luggage passengers? Some news highlights the difference in the price of petrol in Iran and
Ukraine encouraged some passengers to smuggle petrol in their luggage. It is a possibility that the smuggled
petrol in Boeing 737 caused the explosion. Right: the technical failure in the plane was confirmed by Iranian
expert, but not by Ukrainian experts and since the flight was Ukrainian, we had to accept their call. The
petrol is much cheaper in Iran and some tried to smuggle it.
Another plot was a fallacy. For example, they tried to blame the government for not
restricting access to the sky that night, although it is not their duty to do so. For example,
this tweet implies that IRGC asked the Supreme National Security Council to clear the
sky, but the Iranian government did not:
“General Hajizadeh and General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic of
Iran did their duty in asking the Supreme National Security Council to clear the sky.
They know their duty and they sacrifice their lives for Nezam
8
”
Human error was another fake news which was debunked after IRGC claimed the
responsibility. First, the cyber army reduced the incident to a simple human error.
“Operator committed a mistake decided at his own discretion and acted accordingly”
But soon after it was revealed that two missiles were fired, they reinforced the human
error theory.
“Our unity is damaged by treason not error. In appreciation of 42 years of safeguarding
Iran’s sky, we stand with you. I am a Sepahi too”.
8
Nezam literally means system and hardliner and conservative use this word to refer to Iranian regime and appointive parts
whenever they want to differentiate between themselves and the government and elected parts.
Rahmanian
The Journal of Social Media in Society, Vol. 10, No. 2
Spreading conspiracy theory was another plot in the fake news narrative. For example,
this tweet tries to impose the narrative that America is behind the incident:
“We all know that this is the conspiracy of America, and even though if it isn’t, we hold
Sepah dear because they are soldiers of Imam Zaman
9
”
The final major plot in the fake news narrative was exaggerating the outcome of the
attack on Ayn Al-Asad. In this plot, the cyber army tried to pbliterate the incident by
spreading fake news about the attack:
After ten days since the attack on Ayn Al-Asad, America is reporting the casualties
gradually Didn’t they say nothing happened?
This emphasis mainly had two purposes: First, casting doubts on the incidents and
second, accusing any critics of accordance with the enemy plotting to undermine Iranian
victory against American forces.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
In this paper, a systematic approach was used to examine how the Iranian regime
used narratives on social media, specifically Twitter, to oppress civil society, after shooting
down Ukrainian Flight 752. Using scraped tweets from Twitter, this qualitative study
applied the integration of thematic and narrative analyses method to identify themes and
combine them into structures of narratives to provide an insight into how governments
and states use different discourse to create a narrative to oppress. This paper reveals how
authoritarian regimes might use social media to impose their strategic narratives on their
populace.
For the Iranian regime, Twitter always has been a sword of Damocles, enabling
civilians and protestors to express their voices amid tensions and crises. Twitter has
always played an important role in politics in Iran. The disputed 2009 Iranian presidential
election and 2018 civil unrest (Burns & Eltham, 2009; Thieltges et al., 2018) and social
bots and debates on Twitter (Thieltges et al., 2018) have been studied before. Not
9
Hujjat Allah ibn al-Hasan al-Mahdi (Arabic:
, Ḥujjat Allāh ibn al-Ḥasan al-Mahdīy)[a] the 12th Imam in
Shi’ism believed to be Qa’em or redeemer (Encyclopedia Iranica, 2019)
How authoritarian regimes use Twitter to oppress public opinion
366 | Fall 2021 thejsms.org
surprisingly, it was found that the strategic narratives around Flight 752 incident also
manipulated reality and oppressed civilians.
Although these narratives have different plots, they share the same goal, altering
reality. This overwhelming ideological and political agenda underlying the narratives
indicate this fact that social media and platforms like Twitter, still play an important role
in people’s resistance against hegemon narratives of the state.
The main purpose of the Iranian regime and its agents and proxies in social media
is establishing a narrative of reality. Silencing, discrediting, and smear campaigns are
parts of this purpose. Although spotting narratives and their underlying themes is
valuable, understanding how authoritarian regimes use these narratives to oppress is
more valuable. Findings of this study show that various tactics the Iranian regime used to
create a new narrative of the incident.
The Humiliation and Demoralization
One purpose of this manipulation machine is to oppress civilians and social media
users. Several themes and narratives are interpretable within this tactic. Insulting
civilians and sexual threats are aimed at humiliating and provoking civilians.
Demoralizing and targeting hope and dignity of people is designed to send a strong
message that they (those targeted) have no recourse. Spreading anger and fear is to stop
them from tweeting and demanding justice or their civil rights. This tactic is used to
silence people on social media. In this case of online hostility, users get trapped in an
online debate which is a distraction from the main topic.
Celebrities who have a broader reach are more prone to the effect of this strategy.
The cyber army uses fake accounts and trolls to defame and threaten celebrities as opinion
leaders on social media. Smear campaigns against celebrities are orchestrated on social
media, newspapers, and IRIB simultaneously. The Iranian regime wants to break people
on social media, scattering them into nonaligned groups to control them more efficiently.
The Blame Game
This tactic is used to blame everyone except the chief culprits. This projection
method is seen in infiltration and blame policy. With this strategy, the Iranian regime
tries to alter the reality of the incidents and link them to other agents. Blaming America
and UK or even Israel as the minds behind this incident, or any other incident, is an
Rahmanian
The Journal of Social Media in Society, Vol. 10, No. 2
endeavor to put the spotlight on them instead of IRGC. Blame policy is mainly used to
draw attention away from the real culprits. It is done directly through foreign agents or
indirectly through infiltration. In infiltration, the cyber army tries to blame non-insiders
or outsiders in Iranian organizations as the culprits in order to acquit those responsible for
the incident. Infiltrators are not usually declared to the public and the infiltration plot is
gradually dismissed.
Surprisingly, this tactic is not limited to foreign countries or organizations, Iranian
people and celebrities are targeted as well. With this in mind, the Iranian regime tries to
put pressure on people. In this case, the main narrative was to blame people and
celebrities due to the election of Hassan Rouhani as president. although, it is not clear
how electing Rouhani as president and the incident are related, us, this plot was heavily
used.
The Affiliation with the Enemy
The enemy is central to many narratives. In general, the enemy is used as an
umbrella term to refer to an unknown entity but in this case, America was the main
enemy. Hence, the cyber army tries to prove an affiliation and connection between people
and the enemy with the statement: you are either with us or with the enemy. This old
method is reproduced in new forms of narratives on social media and users are accused of
cooperation with the enemy. With this strategy, any act of information distribution or
demand for justice is in line with the enemy’s goals and must be punished. This tactic
justifies the oppressive and suppressive measures against civilians. For example, IRGC
claimed that it arrested the person that filmed the video of the incident and sent it to
journalists, for espionage. His or her whereabouts are still unknown However, Nariman
Gharib, who first posted the video on Twitter claims that IRGC has arrested the wrong
person (Gharib, 2020b).
The threat
Threat is another tactic used to oppress civil society. The aim of the threat is to
overshadow the responsible individuals and organizations and also divert the attention of
users. The threat could be towards a foreign country, in this case, America, or citizens
perceived of affiliation with the enemy.
How authoritarian regimes use Twitter to oppress public opinion
368 | Fall 2021 thejsms.org
Altering The Reality Strategy
One of the main purposes of such efforts is to alter reality. Authoritarian regimes,
aware of the power of social media, try to alter reality and manipulate the masses by
spreading fake news. In this case, Iran tried to alter reality by spreading fake news
through traditional and modern media. Social networks, including Twitter, were among
those influential media through which falsehood was spread. The Iranian regime
systematically weaponized fake news to create a new reality in two ways: altering the
cause of the incident and magnifying other incidents to overshadow the main incident.
First, the cyber army focused on theories such as infiltration, treason, human error, and
foreign attacks to alter reality. After the truth about the shooting emerged, the authorities
tried to deflect by focusing on other things such as the attack on Ein-Al-Assad (Please
provide some information about this) or the number of American casualties.
This Iranian regime uses this tactic to create an alternative reality in order to
manipulate the mind of its supporters as well as civilians.
Glorifying The IRGC
Glorifying the IRGC isto oppress any criticism by linking any critics to the enemies
of the state. In this sense, cyber army and fake accounts praise and glorify IRGC in a way
that users dare not criticize.
In conclusion, these findings on the structures and dynamics of the state strategic
narrative provide some insights and evidence for state-backed intentional disinformation
tactics and campaigns to impose a specific interpretation of reality and ideology to
undermine Iran’s civil society's righteous demands. Unlike many disinformation tactics
which aim to spread confusion (Pomerantsev & Weiss, 2014) as a way to control the
society, these narrative are an attempt to alter reality. Also, considering the limitations on
IRIB foreign TV and radio broadcasting channels imposed by foreign governments and
legislative bodies, and also their costs, social media is a cost-effective tool that can be
operated inside Iran with a global and online reach. IRIB is under US sanctions since
2013 and Iran uses many proxies or seemingly unconnected sources on other social media
such as Facebook to whitewash the Iranian regime. Although Facebook has deleted many
pages connected to Iran, the same pattern is observable on Twitter. Early initiatives from
Twitter might prevent these networks of content mills and spammers.
Rahmanian
The Journal of Social Media in Society, Vol. 10, No. 2
DIRECTION FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
This study should be interpreted within its limitations. First, the number of
hashtags scrapped is limited and increasing hashtags might be beneficial in enriching and
broadening the findings. Also, the number of tweets is limited as well. Scrapping more
tweets gives a better landscape on themes and tactics. Finally, replicating this study in
other social media such as Instagram which is more visual might help us to have a better
understanding of this phenomenon. This study provides ample evidence of the
weaponization of social media by authoritarian regimes and denotes the importance of
social media intervention in a similar situation especially orchestrated by governments
which have a history of violating human rights.
References
Abramowitz, A. I., & Webster, S. (2016). The rise of negative partisanship and the
nationalization of US elections in the 21st century.
Electoral Studies
,
41
, 12-22.
Article 19 (2017, Febryary, 3).
Tightening the Net Part 2: The Soft War and Cyber Tactics
in Iran
, ARTICLE 19. Retrieved from
https://www.article19.org/data/files/medialibrary/38619/Iran_report_part_2-
FINAL.pdf
Amnesty International. (2019). Fragmented and unequal: A justice system that fails
survivors of intimate partner violence in Louisiana, USA (Report No. AMR
51/1160/2019).
Andrews, M. (2004). Opening to the original contributions.
Narrating, Resisting, Making
Sense
, 1-6.
Arnaudo, D. (2017). Computational Propaganda in Brazil: Social Bots during Elections.
Working paper, Oxford, UK: Project on Computational Propaganda.
Boshmaf, Y., Muslukhov, I., Beznosov, K., & Ripeanu, M. (2011, December). The socialbot
network: when bots socialize for fame and money. In
Proceedings of the 27th annual
computer security applications conference
(pp. 93-102). ACM.
Burns, A., & Eltham, B. (2009). Twitter free Iran: An evaluation of Twitter's role in public
diplomacy and information operations in Iran's 2009 election crisis.
CBS News (2020. January, 15).
Iran says U.S. bears blame for Iranian forces shooting
down plane
https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/iran-news-rouhani-says-us-caused-plane-
strike-today-over-donald-trump-killing-qassem-soleimani-2020-01-14/
Cunningham, D., Everton, S. F. and Schroeder, R. (2015), Social Media and the ISIS
Narrative. Monterey, CA: Defense Analysis, Department, Naval Postgraduate
School.
Cunningham, E. (2018, January, 9).
Iran’s leader blames U.S. for unrest but says public
demands ‘must be answered’.
Washington Post.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/irans-leader-blames-us-for-unrest-but-says-
How authoritarian regimes use Twitter to oppress public opinion
370 | Fall 2021 thejsms.org
public-demands-must-be-answered/2018/01/09/7f1e9fde-f54b-11e7-beb6-
c8d48830c54d_story.html
Encyclopedia Iranica (n. d.).
ISLAM IN IRAN vii. THE CONCEPT OF MAHDI IN
TWELVER SHI
ʿ
ISM.
Retrieved 2021, December, 28 from
:
https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/islam-in-iran-vii-the-concept-of-mahdi-in-
twelver-shiism
Frandsen, S. (Ed.), Kuhn, T. (Ed.), Wolff Lundholt, M. (Ed.). (2017). Counter-Narratives
and Organization. New York: Routledge.
Ferrara, E. 2017. Disinformation and Social Bot Operations in the Run Up to the 2017
French Presidential Election. CoRR abs/1707.00086.
Ferrara, E., Varol, O., Davis, C., Menczer, F., & Flammini, A. (2016). The rise of social
bots.
Communications of the ACM
,
59
(7), 96-104.
Fisher, W. R. (1985). The narrative paradigm: An elaboration.
Communications
Monographs
,
52
(4), 347-367.
Floersch, J., Longhofer, J. L., Kranke, D., & Townsend, L. (2010). Integrating thematic,
grounded theory and narrative analysis: A case study of adolescent psychotropic
treatment.
Qualitative Social Work
,
9
(3), 407-425.
Gharib, N. [NarimanGahrib]. (2020a, January 9). The footage i've got from a source - the
moment the missile hit the #Flight752. I can't verify the video yet! but please let me
know if you find anything. I'm in contact with the person who send this video to see
if I can get a version of video which has a meta data on it. [Tweet]. Retrieved from
https://Twitter.com/NarimanGharib/status/1215334836937928705?s=20
Gharib, N. [NarimanGahrib]. (2020b, January 14). Rumours about the arrest of the source
of this #PS752 footage by Iran IRGC are FALSE. [Tweet]. Retrieved from
https://Twitter.com/NarimanGharib/status/1217049972253831169?s=20
Gholipour, B. [beehnam]. (2020a, January 8).
. [Tweet]. Retrieved from
https://Twitter.com/beehnam/status/1214959410222714883?s=20
Gholipour, B. [beehnam]. (2020b, January 9).
[Tweet]. Retrieved from
https://Twitter.com/beehnam/status/1215035567932661762
Howard, P. N., & Kollanyi, B. (2016). Bots,# StrongerIn, and# Brexit: computational
propaganda during the UK-EU referendum.
Available at SSRN 2798311
.
Hoskins, A., & O'Loughlin, B. (2015). Arrested war: The third phase of mediatization.
Information, Communication & Society, 18(11), 1320-1338.
International Federation for Human Rights(2020). ORWELLIAN STATE: ISLAMIC
REPUBLIC OF IRAN’S STATE MEDIA AS A WEAPON OF MASS
SUPPRESSION, https://www.fidh.org/IMG/pdf/iran749aweb.pdf
Jones, M. O. (2019). The gulf information war| propaganda, fake news, and fake trends:
The weaponization of twitter bots in the gulf crisis.
International journal of
communication
,
13
, 27.
Khaldarova, I., & Pantti, M. (2016). Fake news: The narrative battle over the Ukrainian
conflict.
Journalism practice
,
10
(7), 891-901.
King, D. E. (2008). The personal is patrilineal: Namus as sovereignty. Identities: Global
Studies in Culture and Power, 15(3), 317-342.
Rahmanian
The Journal of Social Media in Society, Vol. 10, No. 2
Kollanyi, B., Howard, P. N., & Woolley, S. C. (2016). Bots and automation over Twitter
during the first US presidential debate.
Comprop data memo
,
1
, 1-4.
Krippendorff, K. (2011). Computing Krippendorff's alpha-reliability.Miskimmon, A.,
O'loughlin, B., & Roselle, L. (2014).
Strategic narratives: Communication power and
the new world order
. Routledge.
Krippendorff, K. (2004). Reliability in content analysis: Some common misconceptions and
recommendations.
Human communication research
,
30
(3), 411-433.
Malekian, S., & Finnegan, C. (2019, November, 28).
Iran's supreme leader blames US for
protests over fuel costs as Mike Pompeo voices support for demonstrations.
ABC
News. https://abcnews.go.com/International/irans-supreme-leader-blames-us-
protests-fuel-costs/story?id=67342766
Oliphant, R., Mendick, R., & Nicholls, D. (2020, Januay, 8).
Iran under pressure to explain
Tehran plane crash after 176 killed in Ukrainian jet disaster.
The telegraph
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/01/08/iran-plane-crash-170-passengers-
feared-dead-ukraine-boeing-737/
Papacharissi Z (2015) Affective Publics: Sentiment, technology and politics. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Pomerantsev, P., & Weiss, M. (2014). The menace of unreality: How the Kremlin
weaponizes information, culture and money. The Interpreter, 22. (Nov 22, 2014).
Rinehart, C. S. (2019). Sexual Jihad: The role of Islam in female terrorism. Rowman &
Littlefield.
Sadler, N. (2018). Narrative and interpretation on Twitter: Reading tweets by telling
stories.
New Media & Society
,
20
(9), 3266-3282.
Shahbaz, A., & Funk, A. (2019). Freedom on the net 2019: The crisis of social media.
Freedom on the Net. Freedom House.
Shao, C., Ciampaglia, G. L., Varol, O., Flammini, A., & Menczer, F. (2017). The spread of
fake news by social bots.
arXiv preprint arXiv:1707.07592
, 96-104.
Stronski, P., & Ng, N. (2018). Cooperation and competition: Russia and China in Central
Asia, the Russian far east, and the arctic (Vol. 2, No. 4, p. 14). Washington: Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace.
The New York Times (2020, January, 1),
Plane Shot Down Because of Human Error, Iran
Says.
Retrieved from
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/11/world/middleeast/plane-
crash.html#link-3ea0ca3f
Thieltges, A., Papakyriakopoulos, O., Serrano, J. C. M., & Hegelich, S. (2018). Effects of
Social Bots in the Iran-Debate on Twitter. arXiv preprint arXiv:1805.10105
Tucker, J. A., Theocharis, Y., Roberts, M. E., & Barberá, P. (2017). From liberation to
turmoil: social media and democracy.
Journal of democracy
,
28
(4), 46-59.
Vaismoradi, M., Turunen, H., & Bondas, T. (2013). Content analysis and thematic
analysis: Implications for conducting a qualitative descriptive study.
Nursing &
health sciences
,
15
(3), 398-405.
Weeks, B. (2018). Media and political misperceptions. In Misinformation and Mass
Audiences. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. 127–137.
Woolley,S. (2018). The Political Economy of Bots: Theory and Method in the Study of
Social Automation. In The Political Economy of Robots: Prospects for
How authoritarian regimes use Twitter to oppress public opinion
372 | Fall 2021 thejsms.org
Wojcieszak, M, Smith, B., & Enayat, M. (2013). Finding a Way - How Iranian Reach for
News and Information. Iran Media Program. Retrieved from
http://repository.upenn.edu/iranmediaprogram/3
Zarif, J. [JZarif]. (2020, January 11). A sad day. Preliminary conclusions of internal
investigation by Armed Forces: Human error at time of crisis caused by US
adventurism led to disaster Our profound regrets, apologies and condolences to our
people, to the families of all victims, and to other affected nations. [Tweet]. Retrieved
from https://twitter.com/JZarif/status/1215847283381755914?s=20
Funding and Acknowledgements
The author declares no funding sources or conflicts of interest.
Online Connections
To follow this author in social media:
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=OvoCQYIAAAAJ&hl=en
Researchgate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Emad-Rahmanian
