Iranian Protests: A Revolution Fought In Cyberspace
Photo Courtesy of: Sally Shakkour, Al-Bawaba News
Traditionally, blood spills in revolution. That fact has not changed. Blood still spills. People still die. But rebellion has claimed its space in the online sphere—a relatively new battleground in which ideological and information warfare takes place. In 2022, the medium with the widest, furthest reach and grip on the world is social media. That is what Iranian protesters and their government have been battling for in a vicious tug-of-war. One side is documenting its dissent against the authoritarian theocracy and its violence against women like wildfire, not caring if they burn in the process, while the other is scrambling to smother the firestorm with a blanket internet block that only fans the flames.
The name Mahsa Amini in English and Persian has become the most used hashtag globally over the last 6 months; the number of tweets and retweets with the name exceeded 80 million by the third day after Amini’s death in the hands of Iran’s morality police. Suffice to say, the protesters garnered enough international attention with their strategic use of hashtags that centre the victimised martyr of their movement, triumphantly winning over the world. The 22-year-old Mahsa Amini is not the first woman who was targeted and killed for the way she wore her hijab. But to the world, she represents the women of Iran who suffered, are suffering, and will suffer if change does not come. A suffering that was expressed by sending out her name to the cybersphere millions of times, in the the hope anf fight for change.
In response, the Islamic Republic has pulled out all its stops to keep the country’s protests contained and hidden away in the dark. Such as by enforcing an internet curfew to curb protests daily, and restricting Instagram and WhatsApp. A nationwide information blackout during the 2019 protests took them over 24 hours; 3 years later, a “kill-switch” has been deployed that enables pin-point targeting of certain content and regions in the country with greater sophistication, denying people’s access to online resources and connection with the outer-world.
But this cyberwall is not enough to imprison Iranians. Marcus Michaelsen, a media and communications researcher at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, said: “Iranians have dealt with internet censorship for almost 20 years, they are incredible resourceful.”
93% of those posting hashtags of Amini’s name are aged 18-34. Tech-savvy Gen-Z demonstrators have been using virtual private networks (VPNs) to smuggle hundreds of information contraband out of the country—namely seconds-long clips of Iranian women burning their hijabs, cutting off their hair and chanting “women, life, freedom” in demonstrations.
The most notable video so far would have to be the 16-year-old Nika Shakarami, who has since been allegedly kidnapped, tortured, and murdered by Iranian authorities, singing and laughing at a protest in Tehran—one of the last captured moments of her still breathing. Videos like this one serve as a last-moment testimonial of Shakarami’s character and convictions. It will also be an immortal testimony of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s heinous crimes against humanity with the permanence of social media content.
Iranian protesters understand the virality, emotive appeal, and efficacy needed in the way they use social media in their war against the regime. What the Islamic dictatorship ends up facing in battle is the name of the young woman they tortured and murdered. Which has transfigured into a rallying cry repeated by millions around the world; a weapon behind which protesters and activists could assemble and mobilise rebellion. Hundreds of viral videos chronicling nationwide defiance against an oppressive theocracy have since been created, slipping through the cracks of the government’s cyberwall.
In the wake of these videos, the West immediately took to social media to show solidarity. But aside from the hundreds of thousands of videos of women outside of Iran cutting off their hair in the wake of Mahsa Amini’s death, online discourse on the optics and ethics of the Iranian protests and its effects on Islamophobia has risen as well. Some have criticised Iranians burning their hijabs for “the Iranian government does not represent Islam,” and it perpetuates Islamophobic narratives that the hijab itself is inherently oppressive.
Some Iranians have responded online that it is inappropriate for people who do not live in Iran to impose their experiences as western Muslims into the narrative and for using it as a reference point to evaluate the protests. One TikTok user responded to a video criticising hijab-burning: “They are killing us out there. [...] And you’re making it about you? We’re not burning your hijab, we’re burning ours. We don’t want to wear it. You wear yours, you be whatever you want to be. [...] Do not make it about you. It’s not about you.” Some have clarified that what people are burning is “not [a] hijab,” because Iranian women do not have the freedom to choose whether to wear their headscarves, how they wear it, and whether to be Muslim altogether.
Another TikTok user explained: “It’s a symbol of fucking prison. It’s a goddamn torture weapon. [...] It’s a weapon that’s been [used] to choke them.” Iranian women are burning their hijabs—a symbol of their suffering under the rule of the Islamic Republic—to protest what their government has been forcing them to wear, regardless of personal choice, with the threat of death and torture.
Social media has played a crucial role in the Iranian protests, and the Iranian government has tried to cut off this method of survival. However, Iranians struggle every day to make their voices heard, with their decades of experience overcoming obstacles. What is important is that the world should uplift and amplify Iranian voices, especially those of Iranian women, in their endeavour to attain a life underpinned by freedom and choice.