Document Type : Research Paper
Authors
1 Associate Professor, Department of Sociology,Allameh Tabataba’i University, Tehran, Iran
2 Phd Candidate, Political Sociology, Allameh Tabataba’i University, Tehran, Iran
Abstract
Introduction
In social life, ensuring a sense of security is critical. Obstacles that hinder this growth, whether individual or societal, can arise in the form of violent acts, including sexual assault. Sexual assault is a type of violence that is often considered a women's issue, and any attention to a woman's body without her explicit or implicit consent, if it has a sexual nature, is considered assault, ranging from rape, physical contact, lustful gaze, and verbal teasing to the use of words with sexual themes (Ishaghi, 2003). Hossein Qanbranjad, the Judiciary's representative, reported that the number of cases of rape and sexual abuse in Iran increased from 2011 to 2021. In 2013, there were about 1313 cases of rape, which has shown an increase since then. The number of cases of harassment for women and girls has also grown, from approximately 72,000 cases in 2009 to 142,933 in 2013 (Sharq, 2014, 8/17). Regardless of the multiple causes of such incidents, it is essential to acknowledge the significance of victims sharing their experiences. Internal and external factors, such as feelings of shame and guilt, fear of rejection by family and friends, and the risk of losing one's job, may cause women to remain silent when they experience harassment. Recently, social media platforms have provided a space for the voices of the underrepresented to be heard. The #MeToo hashtag against sexual assault and harassment went viral globally, and the sexual misconduct of prominent and influential figures, including Harvey Weinstein, was exposed online. Twitter was one of the most suitable social media platforms for this campaign (Hermida, 2010). In Iran, people are affected by the global environment and the many years of women's protests as they shared their painful experiences of sexual harassment. Women, men, and even boys participated in this campaign. The campaign gained momentum following the disclosure of sexual harassment of well-known celebrities and spread to everyday people as well. Analyzing these cases can help us develop a deeper understanding and more empathetic attitude towards these experiences.
Conceptual framework
Today, communication technologies have revolutionized human societies by penetrating all social and individual fields, resulting in an unprecedented paradigm shift in human knowledge and the reconstruction of familiar concepts and categories. With the emergence of new information and communication technologies, the technological space has connected remote parts of the world, forming a network that facilitates a fundamental transformation in human social and individual spheres (Castells, 2001, p. 48). Activism is a process by which a group of individuals puts pressure on organizations or other institutions, demanding changes in policies, actions, or critical conditions (Smith, 2005, p. 5). From a rhetorical perspective, co-creational activism refers to the emergence of societal discourses through a negotiation process involving multiple parties, creating social capital and common concepts (Saffer, 2016). According to research, social movements play a crucial role in enabling the democratic process, promoting social change, and influencing policymakers (Uysal & Yang, 2013, cited by Xiong et al, 2018). In the 1960s and 1970s, the liberal and radical branches of the women's movement experienced a resurgence. While the liberal feminist movements emphasized the struggle for equal rights, the radical feminist movements acknowledged the presence of capitalism and male supremacy as the precursors to women's oppression (Taylor & Rupp, 1993). On the other hand, contemporary feminist research aims to comprehend how individuals and social movements combat social inequality and promote the free expression of gender identities while opposing the oppression of marginalized groups (King, 2016).
Studies have established that social media users engage in conversations about social and political issues by liking and sharing content that is linked to a specific hashtag. The hashtag acts as a profiling system in social media, providing users with an avenue to discuss political and social issues and eventually leading to hashtag activism, or the use of hashtags to fight for a cause or support it while raising awareness. In the #MeToo movement, individuals and social movement organizations made use of a bottom-up mechanism to disseminate information among global social networks.
Methedology
To examine the Twitter campaign on sexual abuse and its ups and downs, it is crucial to consider the available data in the digital space. The data collection and analysis techniques employed in this study are based on computational social science methodology. This emerging field strives to utilize large data, particularly internet data generated by individuals, and computational methods to model and evaluate social science theories. In this article, data was collected using computational methods from April 2020 to January 2021, based on hashtag searches utilizing the Twitter API. Additionally, news related to sexual harassment of women was obtained from three news agencies, ISNA, IRNA, and Mehr, by utilizing relevant keywords such as "harassment of women," "rape," "sexual assault," and similar terms from April 2020 to March 2022. The target population included those who tweeted in Persian language on the Twitter social networking platform and employed the hashtag "Narrative of Harassment." During this stage, a vocabulary-based approach was utilized in unsupervised machine learning based on the mentioned hashtag. After collating the data and segregating the tweets related to users' reactions from the tweets of survivors, the motivations and contexts of the users' responses to the narratives of sexual abuse were examined using the thematic analysis method. The themes emerged from this analysis were extracted and comprehended through multiple stages of coding the tweets.
Result
In the aftermath of the publication of narratives of sexual assault against women on Persian Twitter, domestic news agencies released more related news. Among the various categories of news, those categorizable under domestic general news made up 13.33% of the overall volume. Notable events included coverage of the follow-up on the "Prohibition of Violence Against Women" bill, passed by parliament after nearly a decade of preparation. The bill was approved by the government board on January 14, 2018, and submitted to parliament on January 24 (Barna, 7/6/2018). This instance demonstrates how digital spaces and social activism can influence the legal sphere. Quantitatively, the study of tweets further highlights how Twitter has established a space for people with minimal social capital to find opportunities to increase it and express themselves anew. Through virtual social networks, the voices of marginalized groups can be heard and influence public opinion. Persian Twitter offers survivors a platform to gain social support in the form of sensory, informational, evaluative, and instrumental resources in the absence of support from the judicial system. These factors align with the characteristics of a counterpower super network, as described by Emmanuel Castells, which motivates participants to express themselves in the form of collective actions. The potential for wide dissemination of Twitter content, facilitated by the retweet feature, allows survivors to gain some social support outside of formal, organizational structures. One of the key outcomes of the analysis of user tweets during three distinct periods of increased activity and hashtag growth relates to the themes discovered: emotional self-extinguishment, social emotions, empathy, feelings of social responsibility, female rhetoric, permanent trauma, and condemnation of the campaign. The study takes into account socioeconomic factors that led to the reflection of this topic on the virtual space and also considers the critical flow of the campaign.
Conclusion
The study suggests that users are concerned about the continuation of the issue and are attempting to solve these problems by urging the judicial system to support the victims. Twitter has empowered women and granted them agency, transforming them from passive activists into powerful social agents and advocates who influence public opinion about redefining their identity. The role of this space in the rhetorical strength of women should not be ignored. Women can use this space to influence and persuade their audience about their difficult circumstances with different types of legal and emotional speeches. The modern form of rhetoric is also visible through the tolerance of women's posts on virtual networks, including tweets and retweets, and the themes discovered in the tweets showed that in some tweets, users tackled their legal situation by relying on logical arguments or framed tweets to capture the audience's mental space about their conditions. Emotional tweets should not be overlooked; instead, the emotional positions around women's issues serve as a motivational framework for the audience, creating heated emotions around women's issues and providing incentives to improve the status quo and create a public opinion in society. The unique characteristic of this research is the critical narrative formed in conjunction with the revealing and supportive narrative of the campaign in Iran. In the summer of 2022, some activists working in the field of women in Iran issued a statement to remind their cautionary warnings after two years of the movement's formation. These warnings included verifying narratives, reducing sexual assault and harassment to deception, patronizing Iranian MeToo pages, adopting "name-centeredness" in the course of narration rather than informing, the disempowerment of abused women, and other factors. Thus, a two-way flow was established regarding the MeToo campaign in Iran, with a supporting flow aimed at stimulating emotions and encouraging shared actions for women who have faced abuse, and a critical flow aimed at exposing a group of women as opportunists and fishing for attention in the muddy waters of the virtual space, leading to the phrase "women against women." During this criticism, the relationship between the two sexes became distorted, and many female users wanted to verify the authenticity of the victimized women's narratives.
Keywords
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