The community, action, and information functions of social media posts during the 2022 and 2023 Iranian Masha Amini protests: A cross-platform comparison of posts by activist influencers on X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram


Zahra Falahatpisheh, Western University

Social media has become an important tool in feminist hashtag movements (Quan-Haase et al., 2021; Rentschler, 2015). When examining feminist movements, there is a core group of users, referred to as influencers, that post often and engage with content and other users. These central players have many followers and, as a result, have greater influence on the spread of the social movement and its focus. Knowing that influencers can be central catalysts in activist efforts (Huber et al., 2022), there is a need to study how influencers contribute to the spread of a social movement including the type of content they post, and what function their content has. With feminist causes spreading globally and influencers playing such a central role, it becomes important to understand the functions of influencers who operate in censored environments. In this paper, we focus on the 2022/2023 Masha Amini Iranian protests. In the 2022/2023 Masha Amini Iranian protests activist influencers have not only encouraged and created spaces for "generating discourse on various social, cultural, and political issues in Iran" (Tahmasebi‐Birgani, 2017, p. 186), but they have also fueled the movement's spread from both inside and outside of Iran. In this study, we draw from Lovejoy and Saxton's (2012) theoretical framework of microblogging functions to examine the types of functions of activist influencers' content. The present study investigates the diffusion of protest-related content across social media platforms to investigate cross-platform differences. These differences create a need for a comparative lens that challenges the notion of social media as a homogeneous and undifferentiated unit (Matassi and Boczkowski, 2023). Thus, the present paper has two research goals: 1. To understand the communicative functions microblogging serves for activist influencers in the 2022/2023 Iranian protests on X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram. 2. To identify and describe the similarities and differences between how activist influencers use X and Instagram for their activism related to the 2022/2023 Iranian protests. To examine the use of social media by activist influencers during the Iran protests, we conducted a content analysis. Our sample included 18 activist influencers living both in Iran and abroad who published protest-related content on X and Instagram. We used Apify (https://apify.com ), a web scraping tool, to collect publicly available X and Instagram posts from each of the 18 influencers during the protests. To analyze the data, we developed a preliminary coding scheme based on the theory of microblogging functions. To achieve the first research goal, we identified three functions microblogging serves for activist influencers in the 2022/2023 Iranian protests on X and Instagram. We found that information was the most common function of influencers' posts. The central aim of sharing information-based content centered around educating followers, a process that occurred both formally and informally. We also found differences in how influencers shared information to reach diverse audiences. We also uncovered a gendered lens across the information influencers shared. Taking action was the second most prominent function and encouraged followers to get further involved. This function encouraged their followers to raise their voice to continue creating awareness of the injustices. It involved calling for passive and active actions. Calling to action was present across numerous posts on both platforms, with actions encompassing both online and offline activities. The third prominent function of influencers' posts was related to building community. At the core of these posts, was the need for activists--both inside and outside of Iran--to come together to support the protests for the purposes of unity and solidarity. Fostering community occurred at various levels: individual, national, and international. We found that influencers drew attention to the importance of emotions and feelings, such as mourning, anger, rage, and pride. In pursuit of the second research objective, our study revealed that influencers utilized both platforms in similar and distinct ways. These distinctions were most evident in terms of content type and posting frequency on these platforms. On Instagram, we observed a greater diversity in content types compared to X. X appeared to serve as the primary platform for certain influencers, as indicated by their posting frequency on both platforms. Our findings highlight similarities: influencers often shared similar or identical content styles across both X and Instagram.

Non-presenting author: Anabel Quan Haase, Western University; Molly-Gloria Patel, Western University

This paper will be presented at the following session: