A Conceptual Model of Non-Aligned Media Activism in Online Social Networks: With Emphasis on Macro-Level News Trends in the Political and Security Domains

Objective: This study seeks to identify the conceptual model of non-aligned media activism in the political-security domain on online social networks, with emphasis on events during the Iranian calendar year 1398. The main research question concerns the nature of the conceptual model and the content areas emphasized by these media actors. Method: This study adopts a qualitative approach. Data were collected through documentary research and analyzed using Wolcott’s thematic analysis with MAXQDA. After segmenting, refining, and categorizing selected news propositions from websites, Instagram, Telegram, and Twitter, each proposition was assigned a descriptive label based on its context. Through increasing levels of abstraction in subsequent layers of coding, 21 analytical (mid-level) themes were identified within six interpretive (macro-level) themes in the political-security domain. Finally, the thematic network extracted from the entire dataset was mapped, described, and analyzed. Findings: The overall pattern of activism and the primary content focus of the non-aligned media actors portray contemporary Iran as characterized by the misery of Iranians, pervasive insecurity across all domains, and an inefficient and corrupt governing system. These characteristics seek to convey and construct an image of Iran as a ruined society undergoing collapse across all social spheres, as a country without a future and without any clear or desirable outlook. To theorize national despair and sorrow, these actors place these themes at the core of their media confrontation and organize and foreground other themes and subthemes around them within a media framework. Accordingly, the three main facets of the conceptual core “Insecure Iran” are the misery of Iranians, corruption and inefficiency of the governing system, and the collapse of Iran’s social systems, including political, economic, and cultural collapse.