The Formation Pattern of Protest Movements with an Emphasis on the Role of Virtual Social Networks

Virtual social networks have created a revolution in communications, interactions, and sharing of ideas. They have become a vital and effective factor in the emergence and life of protest movements. The aim of this research was to obtain the formation pattern of protest movements in Iran in the context of social networks. Under the influence of virtual social networks, the recent protest events in a wide range of cities all over the country were found to face severe shocks in Iran's official political space and it put many effects on the country's cyber space policymaking by creating a new trend in the implementation and organization of social protests. The common point of these events, i.e., the nationwide scope of the protests, was community-oriented, indicating the prominent role of virtual social networks so that it could be said that relying on new media technologies was very evident in terms of mobilizing resources and organizing protests in these protest movements. Using the theory of the network society, this article tried to answer the question of what pattern existed between the use of virtual social networks and the formation and evolution of protest movements in the country. Using in-depth and semi-structured interviews with academic elites in the field of communication and political science, this article attempted to investigate the mobilization mechanism of protest movements through social networks.

To achieve the mentioned goal, 14 elites related to the subject were selected through targeted sampling by using a qualitative approach and the method of content analysis.  In-depth and semi-structured interviews were conducted both face-to-face and non-face-to-face by using online communication software due to the spread of the Corona disease. Coding and data analysis of the conducted interviews were done manually by using the method of Bravan and Clark (2006). In addition to collecting the primary data by conducting semi-structured interviews with the interviewees, the secondary data from such sources as government websites, reports, books, and articles were used to identify the key events and processes related to the study events in order to facilitate the research line.

78 key concepts, 26 compact semantic units, 7 sub-themes, and 3 main themes were organized. The research findings showed that social networks affected the protest movements based on 3 general themes: "normization", "mobilization and organization", and "field reaction". Social platforms can help protest movements in 3 stages: Normization is the stage of creating community interest and support for a movement. Social movements in the context of social networks try to polarize the society and convince people to join the formed protest movement. In the second stage, the technological possibilities of new media, such as low cost, high speed, and wide range of information exchange create structures for achieving goals in the movement according to the mental readiness of the polarized society. In the third stage, protests enter the real space following the virtual space. Due to the fact that physical protests disrupt the city life, the police have to deal with it. Here, videos of protesters and police-clashing quickly go viral on the social networks, providing an opportunity to create a new cycle of protests. Production of multiple protest cycles in short time intervals causes social instability and reduces social security. It seems that the studied protest events indicated improvement of the situation and limited changes in the framework structure of the political system. Although a revolutionary approach could be seen in the semantic and rhetorical structures of these movements, they could not reach the stage of institutionalization despite their success in the stage of social norming and social agitation. When they reach formalization, they can be classified as reform movements. In social movements, supporters of the movements use different tactics in social networks to normalize, mobilize, and organize people and bring them to the stage. Although the current trend showed the importance of the new communication tools for the creation and survival of protest movements, the power of the government in controlling the Internet bandwidth and filtering social networks revealed that the government could weaken the protest movements by removing the support cycle of web-based social platforms. By emphasizing on maintaining social security and preventing the destabilizing political and security scenarios, these movements failed to achieve their goals.