This talk examines the rising Farsi ‘manosphere’ of Iran and the case of online misogynistic, anti-feminist and anti-queer mobilisations across social media platforms and messaging applications. It focuses on memes and memetic figures that are circulated on Iranian social media to highlight complicated and unforeseen mutations of today’s internet meme culture and online hate culture. Moreover, the research unpacks the increasing convergences of seemingly conflicting online and political contexts. Drawing on digital ethnographic fieldwork on selected platforms as well as visual and conceptual analyses of memes, this research theorises that online figurations of hate have memeto-(micro)political qualities that allow for their propagation across numerous contexts. Furthermore, the case of Iran’s emergent Farsi manosphere is arguably not a totalitarian exception unique to the Middle East but is reconfiguring and standing in alliance with the global rise of the right and its online culture wars.
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Sama Khosravi Ooryad is a PhD candidate in Film and Media Studies at the Department of Cultural Sciences, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Her project is part of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Horizon 2020 doctoral training network, NETHATE, which is a network of excellence for training to understand and counter hate online. Her project critically examines antifeminist, online hate cultures and their global manifestations beyond the oversimplified West/East or democratic/undemocratic divide.
The Global Perspectives on the Far Right webinar series
The webinar series Global Perspectives on the Far Right is hosted by C-REX and takes place every quarter in 2023. The webinars last for one hour from 15:00-16:00 CET, unless indicated otherwise due to the speakers’ time zone differences. This webinar series is a continuation from February 2021.
The regions covered are largely inspired by the new Manchester University Press book series, ‘Global Studies of the Far Right’, by founding co-editor and C-REX affiliate Eviane Leidig.
The webinar will have one short presentation followed by a Q&A session, moderated by Cas Mudde or Eviane Leidig.
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