“We Will Either Find a Way, or Make One”: How Iranian Green Movement Online Activists Perceive and Respond to Repression

While studies on the effect of repression of online activism mainly focus on the capabilities of states in surveillances and filtering on the web, this article focuses on individuals’ responses to repression. Using data gathered by in-depth interviews of online activists of the Iranian Green Movemen...

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Main Author: Ali Honari
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: SAGE Publishing 2018-09-01
Series:Social Media + Society
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305118803886
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spelling doaj-65ddb613aef94fda972749b42e51e82d2020-11-25T03:16:35ZengSAGE PublishingSocial Media + Society2056-30512018-09-01410.1177/2056305118803886“We Will Either Find a Way, or Make One”: How Iranian Green Movement Online Activists Perceive and Respond to RepressionAli HonariWhile studies on the effect of repression of online activism mainly focus on the capabilities of states in surveillances and filtering on the web, this article focuses on individuals’ responses to repression. Using data gathered by in-depth interviews of online activists of the Iranian Green Movement—the pro-democracy movement which emerged after the disputed 2009 elections—this article attempts to shed light on online activism under repression. The article focuses on two questions: How do activists perceive repression? How do they respond to repression? The research distinguishes three dimensions of perceived repression which interactively influence activists’ choices in their response to repression: the importance of the repression, the external assessment of this repression, and the internal assessment. Regarding the response to repression, five distinct strategies are identified (1) de-identification, (2) network reformation, (3) circumvention, (4) self-censoring, and (5) being inconspicuously active. The study has a number of important theoretical and empirical implications for future studies on repression and online activism under authoritarian contexts.https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305118803886
collection DOAJ
language English
format Article
sources DOAJ
author Ali Honari
spellingShingle Ali Honari
“We Will Either Find a Way, or Make One”: How Iranian Green Movement Online Activists Perceive and Respond to Repression
Social Media + Society
author_facet Ali Honari
author_sort Ali Honari
title “We Will Either Find a Way, or Make One”: How Iranian Green Movement Online Activists Perceive and Respond to Repression
title_short “We Will Either Find a Way, or Make One”: How Iranian Green Movement Online Activists Perceive and Respond to Repression
title_full “We Will Either Find a Way, or Make One”: How Iranian Green Movement Online Activists Perceive and Respond to Repression
title_fullStr “We Will Either Find a Way, or Make One”: How Iranian Green Movement Online Activists Perceive and Respond to Repression
title_full_unstemmed “We Will Either Find a Way, or Make One”: How Iranian Green Movement Online Activists Perceive and Respond to Repression
title_sort “we will either find a way, or make one”: how iranian green movement online activists perceive and respond to repression
publisher SAGE Publishing
series Social Media + Society
issn 2056-3051
publishDate 2018-09-01
description While studies on the effect of repression of online activism mainly focus on the capabilities of states in surveillances and filtering on the web, this article focuses on individuals’ responses to repression. Using data gathered by in-depth interviews of online activists of the Iranian Green Movement—the pro-democracy movement which emerged after the disputed 2009 elections—this article attempts to shed light on online activism under repression. The article focuses on two questions: How do activists perceive repression? How do they respond to repression? The research distinguishes three dimensions of perceived repression which interactively influence activists’ choices in their response to repression: the importance of the repression, the external assessment of this repression, and the internal assessment. Regarding the response to repression, five distinct strategies are identified (1) de-identification, (2) network reformation, (3) circumvention, (4) self-censoring, and (5) being inconspicuously active. The study has a number of important theoretical and empirical implications for future studies on repression and online activism under authoritarian contexts.
url https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305118803886
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