unmask the arzeshi
TRANSCRIPT
U N M A S K I N GTHE ARZESHI
I ran’s Conservat ive Cyber-Activ ists and the 2013 Presidential Elect ion
presented by:
From December 2012 to August 2013, Small Media was busy following the activities and discussions taking place within Iran’s ‘Arzeshi’ community. The ‘Arzeshi’ are Iranian online conservative activists who remain deeply devoted to the Supreme Leader, and powerfully influenced by the revolutionary values of the state. Taking in a number of online platforms, our study looks at the Arzeshi presence on the blogosphere, as well as their Google+ and Twitter communities.
Iranian officials have claimed there to be tens of thousands of Arzeshi activists online, busily combating reformists and anti-government protesters in cyberspace. But are these figures accurate? And is there really a single, unified bloc of conservative activists, or is the truth more complex?
We’d like to tell you the story of the Arzeshi over the course of the 2013 presidential election. We’ll walk you through the big political issues they care about, draw out the diversity of the community’s opinions, and then assess just how much influence these hardcore supporters of the Supreme Leader have in Iranian cyberspace.
Google+
Blogs
BLOGS
In February 2013, we took our list of 150 active Arzeshi blogs, and indexed the thousands of links we harvested from their landing pages. We then repeated this same ‘crawling’ process on all of these new links, giving us hundreds of thousands more. This ‘two-step crawl’ was repeated before, during, and after the 2013 presidential elections. Our extended network is built from more than a million links.
PIECING TOGETHER THE ARZESHI COMMUNITY
GOOGLE+
We started our Google+ research by looking at the 60 bloggers from our original blogs list who also had Google+ accounts. We called the Google+ API (Application Programming In-terface), and gathered the 100 most recent activities (+1s, comments, and reshares) from each of these users. We repeated this before, during, and after the elections.
Google+
Blogs
PIECING TOGETHER THE ARZESHI COMMUNITY
PIECING TOGETHER THE ARZESHI COMMUNITY
Firstly, our research team compiled a list of 75 known Arzeshi Twitter users. Then, we called the Twitter API to gather the IDs of who they follow, of who follows them, the number of tweets they’ve published and the date they registered on Twitter.
Google+
Blogs
So what do we mean when we use the term ‘Arzeshi’? Why did we choose this term, rather than ‘pro-government’ or ‘conservative’? And can we be sure that this
is the way the community identifies itself?
ARZESHI VS CONSERVATIVE
ARZESHI
188
METHODOLOGY
It is unclear exactly where the term Arzeshi originated from, but has been used as an identifying label by online Iranian conservative activists since the disputed 2009 elections, being favoured over mohafezeh-kar, the more literal translation of the term ‘conservative’.
The term Arzeshi translates literally as ‘Valued’, and signifies the loyalty these users feel to the founding principles of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
To see which term was most widespread within the community, we took the top five blogs in our network during January, and ‘scraped’ all of the text from their front pages. We then counted the number of times that the bloggers used the terms Arzeshi and mohafezeh-kar. The results turned out in favour of Arzeshi, so this is the term we’ll use.
CONSERVATIVE
43
We’ve established the name of the community. But next we’d like to build an im-pression of its politics, firstly by seeing which politician’s website received the most
links from the Arzeshi blogging network.
SIGNIFICANT POLITICAL FIGURES
Ali Khamenei
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Saeed Jal i l i
4622 IN-LINKS 974 IN-LINKS
197 IN-LINKS
Supreme Leader Khamenei casts the largest shadow over the Arzeshi community, by far.
Former President Ahmadinejad and his potential replacements were of far less interest to Arzeshi bloggers, with comparatively few
bloggers linking to their official websites.
To understand why the Supreme Leader is such an influential figure amongst the Arzeshi, it’d be helpful to give a quick run-down of how the Iranian regime is structured.
STRUCTURE OF REGIME
PARLIAMENT
The Iranian Parliament is made up of 290 seats, with elections being held every four years. Candidates that wish to stand for Parliament must first be vetted and approved by Iran’s Guardian Council to ensure that they meet the state’s strict religious, educational and political standards.
STRUCTURE OF REGIME
GUARDIAN COUNCIL
The Guardian Council is the body responsible for vetting election candidates and approving legislation. Half of its members are clerics appointed by the Supreme Leader, whilst the other half are jurists elected by the Parliament.
STRUCTURE OF REGIME
ASSEMBLY OF EXPERTS
The Guardian Council is the body responsible for vetting election candidates and approving legislation. Half of its members are clerics appointed by the Supreme Leader, whilst the other half are jurists elected by the Parliament.
STRUCTURE OF REGIME
EXPEDIENCY COUNCIL
The Expediency Council is a body wholly appointed by the Supreme Leader. Its role is to act as an advisory body to the Supreme Leader, whilst also being responsible for settling any disputes between the Parliament and the Guardian Council.
STRUCTURE OF REGIME
MEDIA CONTROL
The Supreme Leader exerts immense control over the official media organisa-tions of Iran. He is directly responsible for appointing and overseeing the activi-ties of the head of state broadcaster IRIB.
STRUCTURE OF REGIME
MILITARY CONTROL
As well as being the commander-in-chief of Iran’s armed forces and Revolu-tionary Guard, the Supreme Leader also exerts extensive influence over para-military organisations such as the Basij.
STRUCTURE OF REGIME
CULTURAL CONTROL
The Supreme Leader is very outspoken against Western cultural encroachment on Iran. He consistently works to advance a narrowly-defined religious concep-tion of national culture.
Khamenei wasn’t able to directly intervene in the 2013 elections, however: his influence was felt through the Guardian Council.
WHO IS THE GUARDIAN COUNCIL?
SUPREME LEADER
GUARDIAN COUNCIL
PARLIAMENT
THE SUPREME LEADER SELECTS THE 6 CLERICS OF THE GUARDIAN COUNCIL
THE PARLIAMENT VOTES FOR THE 6 JURISTS OF THE
GUARDIAN COUNCIL
MEMBERS OF THE PARLIAMENT GET PRE-SELECTED BY THE GUARDIAN COUNCIL BEFORE THE PUBLIC CAN VOTE FOR THEM
The Guardian Council was responsible for whittling the 686 applications for the Presidency down to a more manageable field. Up next is an overview of the process.
Click on the labels to learn more about the applicants.
686 PEOPLE APPLIED FORPRESIDENCY IN 2013
30656
FEMALE APPLICANTS
MALE APPLICANTS
GENDER
78836632861012574101
87APPLICANTS AGED UNDER 30
APPLICANTS AGED BETWEEN 56-60
APPLICANTS AGED BETWEEN 30 - 35
APPLICANTS AGED BETWEEN 61 -65
APPLICANTS AGED BETWEEN 36 - 40
APPLICANTS AGED BETWEEN 66 - 70
APPLICANTS AGED BETWEEB 41 - 45
APPLICANTS AGED OVER 71
APPLICANTS AGED BETWEEN 46 - 50
APPLICANTS AGED BETWEEN 51 - 55
AGE
1984889179114943625
20SELF EMPLOYED PEOPLE APPLIED
TEACHERS APPLIED
POLITICIANS APPLIED
ARMY PERSONNEL APPLIED
UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS APPLIED
CLERICS APPLIED
RETIREES APPLIED
UNEMPLOYED PEOPLE APPLIED
DOCTORS APPLIED
LAWYERS APPLIED
OCCUPATION
89 60212 5153 60116
APPLICANTS ACHIEVING PHD
APPLICANTS WITHOUT A HIGH SCHOOL DIPLOMA
APPLICANTS ACHIEVING BACHELORS DEGREE
APPLICANTS WITH RELIGIOUS SEMINARY EDUCATION
APPLICANTS ACHIEVING MASTERS DEGREE APPLICANTS WITH UNKNOWN
QUALIFICATIONS
APPLICANTS WITH A HIGH SCHOOL DIPLOMA
EDUCATION
Of the 686 applicants, only 38 sufficiently met the Guardian Council’s educational, polit-ical and religious standards to make the shortlist.
38 APPLICANTS WERE SHORTLISTED
0 1138 10
9
8
FEMALE APPLICANTS
INDEPENDENT APPLICANTS
MALE APPLICANTS
CONSERVATIVE APPLICANTS
REFORMIST APPLICANTS
GOVERNMENT APPLICANTS
GENDER AFFILIATION
0110
404025
10APPLICANTS AGED UNDER 30
APPLICANTS AGED BETWEEN 56-60
APPLICANTS AGED BETWEEN 30 - 35
APPLICANTS AGED BETWEEN 61 -65
APPLICANTS AGED BETWEEN 36 - 40
APPLICANTS AGED BETWEEN 66 - 70
APPLICANTS AGED BETWEEB 41 - 45
APPLICANTS AGED OVER 71
APPLICANTS AGED BETWEEN 46 - 50
APPLICANTS AGED BETWEEN 51 - 55
AGE
2027040103
0SELF EMPLOYED PEOPLE APPLIED
TEACHERS APPLIED
POLITICIANS APPLIED
ARMY PERSONNEL APPLIED
UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS APPLIED
CLERICS APPLIED
RETIREES APPLIED
UNEMPLOYED PEOPLE APPLIED
DOCTORS APPLIED
LAWYERS APPLIED
OCCUPATION
21 02 5
10 00
APPLICANTS ACHIEVING PHD
APPLICANTS WITHOUT A HIGH SCHOOL DIPLOMA
APPLICANTS ACHIEVING BACHELORS DEGREE
APPLICANTS WITH RELIGIOUS SEMINARY EDUCATION
APPLICANTS ACHIEVING MASTERS DEGREE APPLICANTS WITH UNKNOWN
QUALIFICATIONS
APPLICANTS WITH A HIGH SCHOOL DIPLOMA
EDUCATION
Of these 38 candidates, only 8 made the final cut, taking part in the election campaign.
HASSAN ROUHANI
DESCRIPTIONRouhani is a member of the Assembly of Experts, the Expediency Council, the Supreme National Security Council, and the former chief nuclear negotiator.
Prior to the 2013 elections, Rouhani was not considered to be a particularly outspoken reformist. But his campaign’s promises to open Iran up to international engagement, prioritise economic recov-ery, and push for the release of political prisoners helped him to build a coalition of reformists and moderates that would propel his cam-paign to victory on election day.
ALIGNMENT
MODERATE
FINAL RESULT
50.88%
Click on candidates for more info
MOHAMMAD BAGHER GHALIBAF
DESCRIPTIONThe Mayor of Tehran since 2005, former national chief of police, and former head of the Revolutionary Guard’s air force, Ghalibaf has had a varied career.
Though the polls marked him out as an early frontrunner, he strug-gled to define his campaign clearly. His conservative record and his boasts about personal involvement in crushing the 1999 student protests ensured that he would struggle to reach many voters out-side of his conservative base.
ALIGNMENT
CONSERVATIVE
FINAL RESULT
16.46%
Click on candidates for more info
SAEED JALILI
DESCRIPTIONThe stern, devout and ultra-hardline Jalili was Iran’s top nuclear ne-gotiator from 2007-13.
He served as something of a boogeyman to reformists over the course of the 2013 elections. A serious contender early on in the campaign, Jalili’s popularity amongst his hardline religious base was ultimately not sufficient to secure him victory.
ALIGNMENT
CONSERVATIVE
FINAL RESULT
11.31%
Click on candidates for more info
MOHAMMAD REZA AREF
DESCRIPTIONAref is a former Minister of Technology, who served in the Khatami administration.
Aref ran a fairly uninspiring campaign, reflected in his low polling numbers. He withdrew on June 11, arguing that reformist voters should rally around Hassan Rouhani.
ALIGNMENT
REFORMIST
FINAL RESULT
WITHDREW
Click on candidates for more info
MOHAMMAD GHARAZI
DESCRIPTIONFormer Oil Minister, and Minister of Post, Telephone and Telegraph in the 1980s.
Gharazi’s sudden return to frontline politics baffled many, and his single-note campaign promising to combat inflation excited few. So few, in fact, that there were roughly three times as many spoiled bal-lots than there were votes for Gharazi.
ALIGNMENT
MODERATE
FINAL RESULT
1.22%
Click on candidates for more info
GHOLAM-ALI HADDAD-ADEL
DESCRIPTIONAdel formerly served as Deputy Minister in the Ministry of Islamic Culture and Guidance, was a former Parliamentary Speaker, and is currently an advisor to the Supreme Leader.
His closeness to the Supreme Leader did him no favours in the campaign. After struggling to break into double-digits in the polls, Adel withdrew in the early stages of the race. He endorsed no indi-vidual candidate, but warned against the dangers of electing a re-formist or moderate.
ALIGNMENT
CONSERVATIVE
FINAL RESULT
WITHDREW
Click on candidates for more info
MOHAMMAD GHARAZI
DESCRIPTIONRezaee served as the head of the Revolutionary Guard in the 1980s, and subsequently as the head of Iran’s Expediency Council.
Rezaee is an experienced presidential candidate, having stood in both the 2005 and 2009 contests. This experience did little to help him in 2013 however. Basing his campaign around economic liber-alisation and pledges to reduce Iran’s oil dependence, he failed to make a real mark on the race.
ALIGNMENT
CONSERVATIVE
FINAL RESULT
10.55%
Click on candidates for more info
ALI AKBAAR VELAYATI
DESCRIPTIONVelayati is one of a very small number of individuals who can boast of maintaining a position in front-line politics since the 1979 Revolu-tion, serving as Minister for Foreign Affairs from 1981-1997, then as a hard-line member of the Expediency Council and as international affairs advisor to the Supreme Leader.
This long career in politics did him few favours in the presidential race. Perhaps the highlight of his campaign was a six-minute cam-paign video featuring Velayati sitting in an empty cinema, weeping at revolutionary films. This film failed to ignite his campaign, and he finished in fifth place.
ALIGNMENT
CONSERVATIVE
FINAL RESULT
6.16%
Click on candidates for more info
OFFICIAL RESULTS OF THE 2013 ELECTIONS
In the end, Hassan Rouhani’s victory was a convincing one: he attracted over three times as many votes as Ghalibaf, his strongest conservative rival.
Although many amongst the Arzeshi have claimed that the elec-tion was lost as a result of conservative disunity, the reality is that Rouhani narrowly secured an absolute majority: even combining the totals of his conservative rivals, Rouhani emerges on top with 50.9% of the national vote.
If the Guardian Council filters out any contentious candidates, then how far do elections matter in Iran? Shouldn’t the Arzeshi be con-tent with any of the permitted candidates?
Not quite. The track record of the previous two presidents demon-strates that election outcomes can have significant implications for government policy.
FOREIGN POLICYROUND 1
REFORMIST Khatami1997-2005
In 2013, Khatami’s government proposed a ‘Grand Bargain’ to the United States that would open up a ful l diplomatic dialogue over isses such as:
The Init iat ive was rejected outr ight by the Bush administrat ion
Consequently, this period also saw ruinous economic sanctions imposed against I ran.
Widthdrawl of support to
Hezbol lah
2007 Seizure of Royal Navy sai lors in the Persian Gulf
Transparent nuclear
negotiat ions
2009 - 11 imprisonment
of three Americans
Co-operat ion to stabl ise
Iraq
2011 raid on the Brit ish Embassy
During Ahmadinejad’s presidential term, diplomatic relat ions between Iran and the West completely broke down, result ing in a number of tense incidents:
CONSERVATIVE
Ahmadinejad2005-2013
VS
WOMENS RIGHTSROUND 2
REFORMIST Khatami1997-2005
The Khatami years saw a number of notable advancements in women’s r ights, including:
But the onwards march of the women’s r ights movement was halted during the Ahmadinejad years. This period saw:
CONSERVATIVE
Ahmadinejad2005-2013
VS
Appointment of women to government
posts
Reintroduc-t ion of Family
Protection Law
Minimum age for marr iage was raised
Closure of women’s
publ icat ion Zanan
Str icter dress code laws
Stage encouraged
large famil ies
WOMENS RIGHTSROUND 2
REFORMIST Khatami1997-2005
Opportunit ies for free cultural expression expanded dramatical ly during the Khatami years.
His government tr ied (and fai led) to pass a law legal-ising the ownership of satel l i te TV dishes.Property seizures and arrests relat ing to satel l i te TV consumption fel l during this period. However.
Ahmadinejad’s government oversaw an intensif ied campaign to lessen the cultural impact of satel l i te TV and the Internet.
Pr ivate satel l i te dishes were destroyed in large num-bers by basi j i mi l i t ias. Satel l i te jamming technology was introduced, and internet censorship programmes were stepped up.
CONSERVATIVE
Ahmadinejad2005-2013
VS
So how did the Arzeshi react to the election of the moderate Rouhani in June? These reactions collected from Google+ demonstrate a generally downcast mood.
GOOGLE+ USERS’ ELECTION REACTIONSClick on the speech bubbles for more info
Noting the Arzeshi’s rejection of the new president, we thought it’d be interesting to see whether the Arzeshi blogging community engaged with the conservative press, which
was similarly hostile to Rouhani.
The chart below shows the big Iranian media owners, with segments sized by the number of links Arzeshi bloggers made to their news sites. Mouse-over the image to
see which presidential candidates these media owners backed in 2013: Jalili scooped up a great deal of establishment support.
ARZESHI MEDIA ENGAGEMENT
JALILI
REZAEI
HADAD
GHALIBAF
N/A
This shows us how the Arzeshi interact with the ‘old media’ institutions of the conservative press. But how do these same bloggers make use of social networking
sites? And do they respect the state’s censorship policies, and stick to state-sanctioned networks like Afsaran and Cloob? Or do they use Facebook and Twitter
in spite of the restrictions?
The map below shows how users connected to different social networking sites at each data collection point in our study. The outer ring is made up of the individual users that linked to a social networking site at each point, and the inner ring is comprised of
the social networks themselves, sized by the number of links they received.
Click on the labels on the right-hand side to toggle the display of users’ links to each site. For example, clicking ‘Facebook’ will show all of the links Arzeshi pages made to the site.
SOCIAL NETWORK LINKS - DECEMBERAll blocked sites
SOCIAL NETWORK LINKS - DECEMBERAll non-blocked sites
SOCIAL NETWORK LINKS - JUNEAll blocked sites
SOCIAL NETWORK LINKS - JUNEAll non-blocked sites
SOCIAL NETWORK LINKS - AUGUSTAll blocked sites
SOCIAL NETWORK LINKS - AUGUSTAll non-blocked sites
Next up, we’ll take a closer look at our wider blogging network. There was a staggering volume of data here, so we’ve broken the important information
down into some more manageable chunks.
THE ARZESHI BLOGSPHERE
We gathered our blogging data at three separate time points - in February, June and August. Taking samples from timepoints months apart, we expected to see some gradual changes in the structure of the network.
However, we actually saw that there was a striking contunuity in the structure of the network across each of our data points.
THE ARZESHI BLOGSPHERE
So rather than taking each of these data sets in turn, we decided to take an average of our statistics from across the three time points and to analyse the average make-up of the network over the whole period.
This way, rather than drowning in a sea of superfluous data, we could focus on analysing the actual content of the blogs in the network.
THE ARZESHI BLOGSPHERE
WHAT DO I SEE HERE?This circle represents the average size of our blogging network across the period studied. From this data i t would appear that the Arzeshi blogging network is in fact made up of tens of thousands of blogs and websites, which may suggest there to be some element of truth in the government’s claims for the existence of an onl ine legion of con-servat ive Arzeshi act iv ists.
Then we started to dig deeper. Cl ick on the net-works below to see which blogs remained when we started f i l ter ing out the ones that received the least l inks. For example, cl icking on the [>5] network wi l l el iminate al l of the blogs that received fewer than 5 l inks from other sites in the Arzeshi network. The [>100] network, meanwhile, shows only the most wel l-read blogs that received over 100 l inks.
Cl ick on a group for more info
THE ARZESHI BLOGSPHERE
TIMEPOINT 1
TIMEPOINT 2
TIMEPOINT 3
WHAT DO I SEE HERE?We found that 42264 blogs and websites were connected to our network by only a single l ink: that’s 62.5% of our total. Such tenuous connec-t ions imply that these blogs are either not suff i-cient ly related to our network to be considered Arzeshi, or instead that these blogs, whi lst simi lar in style and content to other Arzeshi blogs, simply have no readership or inf luence.
We took a closer look at a number of these one-l ink wonders. Read more about some of these blogs below.42264
SINGLE
x
x
Click on a post for more info. Find more content analysis onl ine
THE ARZESHI BLOGSPHERE
TIMEPOINT 1
TIMEPOINT 2
TIMEPOINT 3
OSVAH.PERSIANBLOG.IR
BLOG NAMEOsveh
BLOG DESCRIPTION This blog copies content from news websites and other onl ine sources.
42264
SINGLE
x
x
THE ARZESHI BLOGSPHERE
WHAT DO I SEE HERE?There is another sharp drop when we look at the sites receiving 10 or more l inks from our network. On average, only 3564 of the sites in our network - that’s 5.3% of our total - managed to attract 10 or more l inks from elsewhere.
TIMEPOINT 1
TIMEPOINT 2
TIMEPOINT 3
Click on a post for more info. Find more content analysis onl ine
8613
>5
x
x
THE ARZESHI BLOGSPHERE
TIMEPOINT 1
TIMEPOINT 2
TIMEPOINT 3
8613
>5
x
x
MKAZEMY.BLOGFA.COM
BLOG NAMECity of God
BLOG DESCRIPTION Moussa Kazemi is this blog’s author, and is studying for a MA Pol i t ical Science degree. His blog is inactive, and it seems as though he has ret i red from blogging for the t ime being.
THE ARZESHI BLOGSPHERE
WHAT DO I SEE HERE?There is another sharp drop when we look at the sites receiving 10 or more l inks from our network. On average, only 3564 of the sites in our network - that’s 5.3% of our total - managed to attract 10 or more l inks from elsewhere.
3564
>10
TIMEPOINT 1
TIMEPOINT 2
TIMEPOINT 3 x
x
x
THE ARZESHI BLOGSPHERE
955
>25
TIMEPOINT 1
TIMEPOINT 2
TIMEPOINT 3 x
x
WHAT DO I SEE HERE?By this point we have lost the vast major i ty of our network. An average of 955 sites attract 25 or more l inks from our network, representing around 1.4% of our total. Given that these blogs are re-ceiving a modest number of l inks, we can say that the blogs represented from here on out are more regular ly updated, and r icher in or iginal content.
Cl ick on a post for more info. Find more content analysis onl ine
THE ARZESHI BLOGSPHERE
955
>25
TIMEPOINT 1
TIMEPOINT 2
TIMEPOINT 3 x
x
KAF-ALEF.PERSIANBLOG.IR
BLOG NAMEA Piece of Heart
BLOG DESCRIPTION Kobra Asoopar is a journal ist based at the hard-l ine newspaper Javan - an organisat ion with close t ies to the IRGC. She has been loudly opposed to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad since he embraced Mashaei as a pol i t ical al ly. Simi lar ly to the major i ty of the Arzeshi, she strongly supports the Supreme Leader, Ayatol lah Seyyed Al i Khamenei. In the 2013 elect ion, she supported Gholam Al i Hadd-ad-Adel, but fol lowing his withdrawal from the race, she refused to comment on her elect ion choices.
POST TITLESattar Beheshti ’s arrogance, or FATA?
BLOG DESCRIPTION Asoopar strongly cr i t icized Iran’s Cyber Pol ice (FATA) for their conduct during the controversy over the death in custody of blogger Sattar Be-heshti. Asoopar argues that Beheshti was original-ly an insignif icant act iv ist, but that his death has opened the government up to widespread cri t icism and popular outrage. She notes that as a conse-quence of Beheshti ’s death, his blog - which used to receive less than 10 visits per day - has exploded in popular i ty.
DATE 14 January 2013
THE ARZESHI BLOGSPHERE
WHAT DO I SEE HERE?Here, we start to lose al l but the active core of the Arzeshi community. An average of 316 sites received 50 or more l inks over the course of this study, comprising 0.5% of our total network. We can say, therefore, that around one in every 200 of the sites and blogs in our network could be considered ‘core Arzeshi’ domains, receiving a signif icant number of l inks from across the Arzeshi community.
316
>50
TIMEPOINT 1
TIMEPOINT 2
TIMEPOINT 3 x
x
Click on a post for more info. Find more content analysis onl ine
THE ARZESHI BLOGSPHERE
316
>50
TIMEPOINT 1
TIMEPOINT 2
TIMEPOINT 3 x
x
AHESTAN.WORDPRESS.COM // AHESTAN.IR
BLOG NAMEAhestan
BLOG DESCRIPTION Omid Hosseini is the author of this blog. This ad-dress is an older version of his blog ahestan.ir, and hasn’t been updated since June 2010. Ahestan’s new address is located at ahestan.ir and is updat-ed regular ly.
POST TITLEWho was the winner of the debates?
BLOG DESCRIPTION Hosseini bel ieves that the last presidential debate (on the subject of foreign pol icy) was the best of the three, arguing that i t was part icular ly signif icant due to i ts subject matter. In his opinion, there was no clear winner coming out of the debate, although he says Al i Akbar Velayat i, Saeed Jal i l i and Hassan Rouhani were better than the other candidates.
DATE 7 June 2013
LINK
THE ARZESHI BLOGSPHERE
WHAT DO I SEE HERE?The blogs and websites in this segment could be considered the ‘ inner core’ of the Arzeshi commu-nity, making up just 0.2% of our total network, on average. Yet these sites are much more active than those we see in the outer segment of the network.
We do see one notable change across the period of our study: a number of high-prof i le Arzeshi blogs appear to become somewhat inactive in the after-math of Rouhani’s elect ion victory.105
>100
TIMEPOINT 1
TIMEPOINT 2
TIMEPOINT 3
x
x
Click on a post for more info. Find more content analysis onl ine
THE ARZESHI BLOGSPHERE
105
>100
TIMEPOINT 1
TIMEPOINT 2
TIMEPOINT 3
x
x
KISTIEMA.BLOGFA.COM // YAMINPOUR.IR
BLOG NAMEWho We Are
BLOG DESCRIPTION Vahid Yaminpour is a prominent Arzeshi blogger who was previously a television presenter with the state broadcaster, Is lamic Republ ic of I ran Broad-casting. He supported Saeed Jal i l i in the 2013 campaign.
POST TITLEIn the f ield of art and culture, wi l l anything change!?
BLOG DESCRIPTION This post discusses the newly-appointed Minis-ter of Culture Al i Jannati, as wel l as providing an analysis of Rouhani’s cultural pol icies. Yaminpour notes that Jannati is a good choice to head up the ministry, owing to his record as an able diplomat, though he concedes that he has l i t t le background in cultural matters. In addit ion, Yaminpour remind-ed his readers of the ‘soft war ’ being waged by the West against I ranian society. He warns the govern-ment to tread a cautious path on cultural matters, and to be guarded against individuals hi jacking the cultural ministry in the name of ‘ f reedom of expres-sion’.
DATE 17 August 2013
LINK
THE ARZESHI BLOGSPHERE
WHAT DO I SEE HERE?We’ve looked at one way to measure Arzeshi ac-t iv i ty: by looking at the number of l inks that blogs receive, we can get an idea of their readership, and inf luence.
But another way to measure the Arzeshi commu-nity’s act iv i ty is by looking at the number of blogs that l inked away to social networking sites and news sites. This method al lows us to assess the extent of integrat ion between the Arzeshi blogo-sphere and social media platforms, as wel l as their level of engagement with the conservat ive press.
Cl ick on a group for more info
THE ARZESHI BLOGSPHERE
NEWS SITES STORYBut looking closer at some of our sample blogs, we start to see why: whereas a lot of content does get recycled from around the network, Arzeshi users aren’t very rel iable at attr ibut ing their news posts. These are examples of blogs that post a lot of un-attr ibuted content from other sites
We’ve already seen that when Arzeshi engage with media sources, they tend towards conservat ive news outlets, but just how much of the overal l net-work l inks to these sites?
Surprisingly l i t t le - at each of our three data col lec-t ion points, we found that only around 2% of the Arzeshi network l inked to any one of the 22 most prominent news agencies in our network.
Cl ick on a group for more info
1472
NEWS SITES
LINK 1 LINK 2
THE ARZESHI BLOGSPHERE
SOCIAL MEIDIA STORYIn part, this may be due to the off icial state re-str ict ions on social networking sites l ike Facebook and Twitter: although Arzeshi operate Google+ and Twitter accounts fair ly openly, attaching actual l inks to these forbidden accounts from their blogs may make them l iable to be taken down.
Regardless, the lack of l inks between blogs and social networks underl ines the disconnected nature of the Arzeshi community across dif ferent plat-forms - there are very few connections binding the blogging community to the Google+ and Twitter Arzeshi.
I f old media sources l ike news sites are poorly integrated into the wider network, then what about social media sites? Are they any better- integrated?
No, actual ly - they fare even worse than the news sites. The top 11 social networking sites in our network were l inked to by an average of less than 1% of the sites in our network.
Cl ick on a group for more info
633
SOCIAL MEDIA
Now we turn to the Arzeshi community on Google+. The most interesting feature of this community is the active engagement between Arzeshi: whereas Arzeshi blogs are the place to
publish lengthy tracts of political commentary, Google+ offers far more opportunities for the Arzeshi to exchange opinions and get into debates.
The next section maps the relationships between Google+ users, and will show the way in which Arzeshi users interact with one another’s posts. Make sure to play around with the filters to get an idea of the network’s structure, and check out the conversation topic maps to see
what the Arzeshi were talking about.
Conversation starters are the big players in the Google+ network: they write the posts that peo-ple engage with most. Click on each user to highlight their posts in the network.
Conversation keepers are the users that comment on and interact with these posts. Though they don’t necessarily make popular posts themselves, their comments on other posts keep
the community alive.
Click through the ‘Topics’ labels to read the actual conversations held by Arzeshi activists. Switch between pre-, mid- and post-election views in the top-left.
SAMPLE OF CONTENT ANALYSIS
SAMPLE OF CONTENT ANALYSIS
As well as Google+ we wanted to look at how the Arzeshi community organised itself on Twitter. So once again, we took 75 high-profile Arzeshi Twitter users that we had been previously
monitoring, and set them as the core of our Arzeshi network.
The next chart shows our 75 original Twitter users, the dates they registered on Twitter, and their number of followers. As you’ll see, one of our users had far more followers than anyone else,
and broke any kind of graph we tried to work with.
We excluded this user from the rest of our Twitter analysis to create a more reflective portrait of the broader network and to prevent them from skewing things completely.
Why? The account, unsurprisingly in a league of its own, is @Khomeinii1 (watch out for the ex-tra ‘i’), formerly a Twitter fan page for the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini, it has since
been hijacked by an unknown individual.
CORE TWITTER USERS
CORE TWITTER USERSClick on the graph to see it onl ine
RECIPROCITY ON TWITTER
In the next image you’ll see a circular graph. Around the outside are our 74 original Twitter users, ranked anti-clockwise from most-followed to least-followed. The mutual connections
between them are highlighted in red.
There are no mutual connections at all between the 10 most-followed Twitter users in this network. Only 3 of them have posted recently, and they tend to post only on significant
national or religious holidays.
This typifies the factionalised Arzeshi community and debunks the theory that pro-govern-ment propaganda on Twitter is regular and pervasive.
RECIPROCITY ON TWITTER
We next wanted to see whether this fragmentation and lack of connection existed within the extended Twitter Arzeshi network - meaning our original 74 users along with all their followers,
and the users they followed.
RECIPROCITY AND POLITICAL ALLEGIANCE
RECIPROCITY AND POLITICAL ALLEGIANCE
RECIPROCITY AND POLITICAL ALLEGIANCE
RECIPROCITY AND POLITICAL ALLEGIANCE
RECIPROCITY AND POLITICAL ALLEGIANCE
RECIPROCITY AND POLITICAL ALLEGIANCE
Arzeshi community across three separate platforms, i t is apparent that the community is neither as united, nor as immense as state off icials l ike to argue.
Here’s a summary of what we’ve learned:
The Arzeshi have a number of unoff icial ‘ leaders’ who shape conservat ive opinion across various platforms, with journal ists such as Vahid Yaminpour and Kobra Asoopar leading the charge.
The Arzeshi fai led to unite around a single presidential candidate - they are not a discipl ined pol i t ical force, but a fract ious onl ine community l ike any other.
The Arzeshi are united in one thing - their utter devotion to Iran’s Supreme Leader.
The Arzeshi represent a genuine community - they take t ime off from pol i t ical discussions to form last ing social connections and share personal stor ies.
State claims of a sprawling onl ine network of conservat ives are bogus, with much of the network padded out with low-content pages.
Credits: Senior Researchers
James MarchantAmin SabetiBronwen RobertsonAli Fisher
Senior DesignerMaral Pourkazemi
Junior DesignersIsabel BeardAndrea Paolini
Web DeveloperArturo Cullinane
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