The Virtual as the New Social? Iranian Women’s Online Activism

Despite Iranian regimes excessive filtering of the internet, censoring and arresting online activists and bloggers, and issuing harsh prison sentences for these individuals, Iranian women’s online activism continues to target the social, political, cultural and economic inequalities and environmental crisis. These activities have brought the political mobilizing force of cyberspace, as well as the role of women in these movements, sharply into focus. This paper will propose that Iranian women are leading the way in creating multiple sites of virtual, and highly mobile “civil society” where the electronic flow of ideas and information is shaping the radical democratic aspirations of Iranians in content, method, philosophy, and aesthetics of resistance.
My research on selected social networks, created by Iranian women’s organizations and activists indicates Iranian women appropriate these platforms to imagine new radical, yet non-violent forms of activism as well as to craft a range of social-networking strategies to attain a variety of goals. Employing feminist critical content analysis, this research argues that Iranian women are moving away from one dimensional articulation of the “socio-political,” and are instead adopting a conjunctural approach wherein different forms of inequality are read as “realities-events” that emerge and evolve with one another. Therefore, these virtual platforms have become transient civil societies offering the participants a chance to identify, highlight and examine the intersections of various patterns of inequalities and form virtual conversations around these issues.