Campaign of female candidates for Iran’s parliamentary Election in Social media; Case study of Instagram

The present study examines the campaigns of female candidates during the 11th parliamentary elections (2019) in social media. Exploring the posts presented on their Instagram pages to find out how they used the capacities of this popular platform for political propaganda and political bargaining to attract the attention of indigenous voters.Pages of the 8 winner and loser candidates in noncenteral areas, especially constituencies involving ethnic groups and minorities, were monitored and video and textual information was analyzed during the permitted campaign period. The total data of 121 posts were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively in terms of duration of activity, number of posts, number of comments, number of words, type of images, number of likes, number of followers.The findings show that female candidates and their election campaigns did not make much use of the capacities of Instagram cyberspace in the election campaign in terms of the mentioned variables. The methods of face-to-face communication, backed by kinship-ethnic relations, may have determined the voting behaviour of these candidates. However, features such as not providing the audience with the opportunity to comment, not expressing political orientation, not taking a stand on issues related to the status of women and their demands in the local community on the one hand and analyzing the qualitative content of their advertising images on personal pages on the other, indicate that the old media gatekeepers are still present. As a result, female candidates have been very cautious in the popular Instagram media for getting the votes.