OPEN ACCESS

Babak Rahimi

Facebook Iran The Carnivalesque Politics of Online Social Networking

Download

Abstract

This study explores different modes of political communication and interaction in new social networking sites, particularly Facebook. With a focus on postelection Iran, it uses Mikhail Bakhtin's notion of the carnivalesque as a way to understand the emergence of a new dissident politics of cyber-activism. For the oppositional Iranian Green Movement, Facebook has provided a communication forum where discourses and symbols of protest allow for the production of new forms of social dialogue within communicative spaces and achieve a distinct virtual reality geared to subversion of state officialdom. In this light, the author concludes, Facebook in Iran represents an emerging frame of reference for a new kind of activism that seeks to redefine both the everyday spaces and the official cultures of sociability, and, by extension, to connect with a broader spectrum of social and global forces unsettling received forms of public speech.

Keywords

  • Carnivalesque
  • Iran
  • political activism
  • social network
  • virtual space

Preview

Article first page

What do you think about the recent suggestion?

Trova nel catalogo di Worldcat