Mohammad Rezaei; Maryam Pooraskari
Abstract
This study tries to examine the relations between using Facebook and people’s voting behavior in Iran’s presidential election in 2013. Taking a qualitative approach, we ...
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This study tries to examine the relations between using Facebook and people’s voting behavior in Iran’s presidential election in 2013. Taking a qualitative approach, we used virtual ethnography and observation techniques, as well as in-depth interviews to gather the research data and we used thematic analysis to analyze to gathered data. The results show that for a number of reasons, Facebook played a role in changing people’s minds from not attending the election to taking part in it. The election was the first after the disputed presidential election in 2009 and some people considered voting a taboo. Lack of dialogue and political discussion in Iran’s political and media environment outside Facebook, improved the website’s role. Another reason was the fact that Facebook provided an alternative to the state media. We argue that analyzing the effects of specific social media is only possible if one looks into the country’s political environment and the role of the social media websites in the society. The results show that political arguments may result in increasing people’s level of political information or motivation, but don’t necessarily change their voting behavior.
