A discursive approach to falsehood and incivility: Analyzing malicious agents and practices on Persian Twitter

Disinformation and incivility in social media spaces are pertinent concerns in contemporary societies as they threaten democratic practices and principles. However, the existing literature remains mainly Western-centered to date. While multiple instances of such malicious campaigns exist in authoritarian regimes, our knowledge of them is niche. Moreover, while there is a discursive affinity between disinformation and incivility, the previous studies only focus on the former. In this way, they neglect to investigate incivility's potential, applications, and implications as an act of suppression. Furthermore, extant research concentrates on authoritarian governments when they want to study false information and incivility in non-democratic societies. However, opposition groups also are susceptible to performing those nefarious activities. This point remains relatively neglected to date in scholarly debates. This paper addresses the above gaps by investigating the networks of disinformation and incivility on the Iranian Twittersphere during #MahsaAmini movement. #MahsaAmini movement was a nationwide protest started in September 2022 in response to the murder of Mahsa Amini, a young Iranian woman. Many Iranians went on Twitter to show their rage against the regime’s brutality and policies. On the other hand, the regime runs a malicious campaign, using disinformation and incivility to suppress the movement. #MahsaAmini provides us with a convenient case to conduct this research as both pro- and anti-regime sides were engaged in disinformation and incivility campaigns. Drawing on the literature on disinformation and incivility, we try to answer the following RQs, focusing on #MahsaAmini movement. RQ1: Who were the main actors of disinformation and incivility on Persian Twitter? What were their political orientations, identities, and careers? RQ 2: In which ways did different actors share disinformation and use uncivil language? RQ 3: In which ways were pro-regime and anti-regime users similar or different in sharing disinformation and incivility? RQ 4: How were disinformation and incivility connected in different political groups’ tweets? We collected all popular tweets using #MahsaAmini in Farsi form, i.e., tweets with more than 1k likes in a day (مهسا_امینی#) from September 15, 2022, to October 15, 2022. Our data collection resulted in a dataset of 58,088 Persian tweets sent by 10,308 unique users. We followed a discursive approach to analyze users and their tweets. Four human coders coded all users qualitatively and discursively at the first stage to identify their political orientation (pro or anti-regime), career (e.g., journalist), and identity (real or anonymous). We found 1,388 pro and 5,849 anti-regime users (other users had been inaccessible, e.g., they were suspended or removed). Then, we extracted all tweets of each group (N of pro-regime tweets= 6,170. N of anti-regime tweets = 28,838). Drawing on critical discourse analysis, coders coded the tweet samples to investigate the mechanisms and practices of sharing disinformation and using profanity language. Initial results show that there is a remarkable similarity among both camps in their malicious behavior. Now, we are in the middle of qualitative analysis. Thus, the final results will be ready before the conference, shedding light on disinformation and incivility practices and networks in non-democratic societies.