Digital ethnography, resistance art and communication media in Iran (original) (raw)

On June 14, 2013, Iran will again challenge its nation and nation-state. The country will confront another presidential election-an event that four years ago became a national crisis, a social catastrophe, and a traumatic memory. 1 I have previously discussed the important role played by Iranian independent documentary filmmakers as well as urban journalists in the recording and representation of the traumatic events of the Iranian presidential crisis of 2009 (Khosronejad, 2009). However, much remains unsaid regarding the significance and function of the visual material and digital resistance art that was created and circulated on the Internet as a result of the national crisis. This collection is one of the first attempts to discuss the importance of visual resistance and protest art, its circulation via digital media, and its function in the peaceful movement that was transformed into one of the most traumatic events in the history of contemporary Iran. Following the official announcement of the Guardian Council of the Iranian government regarding the approval of four presidential candidates (Mahmud Ahmadinejad, Mehdi Karrubi, Mirhoseyn Mousavi and Mohsen Rezayi) for the Iranian election of 2009, major visual propaganda and media campaigns penetrated Iranian society. 2 Before the election, Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani, in a speech during Friday prayers, emphasized that the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) should collaborate closely with the four candidates to present their views and policies online for all Iranians. Following this request, for the first time in the history of postrevolutionary Iran, IRIB offered a special online program featuring debates among the candidates, who were allowed to describe their own political agendas and discuss their 1 This article was written a few weeks prior to the 2013 presidential election in Iran. Please note that all images in this article were retrieved from the Internet in 2009, but have since been removed. Thus there are no links provided for the images. 2 For more information, watch the documentary The Real Fake.