Practising Digital Feminist Activism in the Middle of National Liberation Movements: The Case of ‘Women, Life, Freedom Uprising” in Iran

The recent ‘Women, Life, Freedom’ uprising in Iran was sparked by the death of Jîna Amini, a young Kurdish woman, killed by the ‘morality police’ for ‘improper hijab’ in September 2022. Iranians, led by women, protested the state's gender, ethnic, and religious violence. Digital activism played a crucial role during the protests and after their brutal suppression.

This research examines the mediation of women’s activism and debates around gender issues on digital media platforms during the movement, focusing on the generation and circulation of various narratives and images regarding women's issues. The study investigates how these platforms have become battlegrounds for rival political narratives competing for visibility and legitimacy. It particularly interrogates discursive struggles by Iranian feminists and women’s rights campaigners against the resurgence of forms of nationalisms manifested by both pro-government and pro-monarchist forces during the movement.

This multisited mobile ethnographic research (Postill and Pink 2012; Hine 2008) is built on an archive of digital materials collected from various digital spaces since the movement's first day. These materials are analysed using discourse analysis to show how competing narratives are shaped and constrained by the mediation opportunity structure (Cammaerts 2018; 2015) of digital media, as well as by power relations within the Iranian political opportunity structure (Tilly and Tarrow 2015), including historical trajectories of women’s movements and their clashes with nationalist discourses.

I argue that feminist activists, particularly those from nonmainstream and marginalised backgrounds, are appropriating digital media affordances to contribute their perspectives to public discourse but also to challenge masculine nationalist narratives and forms of ‘femonationalism’ (Farris 2017) emerged during the movement. Furthermore, digital media have created spaces for women to revive and reclaim their longstanding struggle for the inclusion of women in the concept of Iranianness (Moallem 2005) countering their historical exclusion from the concept of the nation.