Bots Versus Humans

Discursive Activism During the Pandemic in the Iranian Twittersphere

Bibliographic Data

ID2414715
AuthorsH Kermani (0000-0002-6626-1364, University of Vienna, corresponding author), Alireza Bayat Makou (0009-0000-7849-2488, Leibniz University Hannover), Amirali Tafreshi (0000-0003-0252-4396, University of Tehran), Amir Mohamad Ghodsi (0000-0002-9254-0148, Allameh Tabataba'i University), Homa Ataee (0009-0009-7780-7172, Allameh Tabataba'i University)
Year2023
Volume9
Issue4
Publication date2023-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial Media + Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2056-3051 • E-ISSN: 2056-3051
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/20563051231216927
OpenAlexW4389889218
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited57

This article explores how the pandemic in Iran was discursively framed by automated accounts and human users. While there is a growing body of literature on bot activism, little is known about how bots and humans framed the pandemic in authoritarian regimes. Drawing on networked framing theory, we use both computational and qualitative methods to fill this gap. Our empirical analysis centers on a data set of 4,165,177 tweets collected between 27 January 2020 and 18 April 2020. We found that while anti-regime human users strongly criticized Iran's regime, pro-regime bots countered with messages emphasizing the sacrifices of medical staff, the strength of Iran, and the failings of Western governments in managing the crisis. Our results suggest that Persian Twitter human users were largely against the regime, while the regime employed bots extensively to maintain balance. Human users used sarcasm, while pro-regime bots invoked religious and revolutionary sentiments metaphorically to defend the regime. By focusing on a relatively unexplored context, this article adds to the growing literature on bot activism

Authoritarianism · Democracy · Irony · Media studies · Pandemic · Persian · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Public relations · Sarcasm · Sociology · Hate Speech and Cyberbullying Detection · History · Law · Misinformation and Its Impacts · Social Media and Politics

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