Social media as a site of transformative politics: Iranian women’s online contestations

Abstract

This chapter addresses some of the challenges, and some of the positive outcomes, of women’s use of social networking sites in their struggles for social justice and gender equality in Iran. Iranian women use these sites to express social forms of assertive female subjectivity and to actively participate in ongoing assessments, evaluations, and rearticulations of concepts such as politics, culture, gender identity, resistance, and activism. The chapter underscores the transgressive possibilities, radical potentials, and spaces of dissent that such online platforms open up for ordinary Iranian women and activists alike. The author concludes that women’s online platforms must be read and understood as spaces of cultural, social, and political contestation, and as one of the arenas in which Iranian agents of radical political change are emerging.