Internet Memes as protest media: the anti-establishment digital protest of Mahsa Amini

The power of digital platforms over traditional news media has led to the process of Platformization of news, i.e. the penetration of the infrastructures, economic processes, and governmental frameworks of platforms in different spheres of life, such as economy, politics, and culture. This transformation has altered the news distribution cycle, and the audience has become more decentralized. Therefore, the concept of citizen journalism plays a crucial role in comprehending this process of decentralization by involving internet users in creating user-generated content that contributes to social and political discourse. Positioned as creative devices, Internet memes facilitate the potentially viral communication of one's social and political beliefs and orientations, generally always among groups with similar or opposing ideological beliefs. As Internet memes function as tools of communication, used mainly by young generations to participate in social and political public affairs, it is essential to understand the features and functionalities of these new digital tools. The term meme was firstly introduced by the evolutionary biologist Dawkins in 1976 to define "a unit of cultural transmission or imitation, similar to genes" (Dawkins, 1976). Even if Internet memes are usually linked to mocks and teases, in some cases they serve a higher scope. Research has demonstrated that people produce and use Internet memes also to contribute to public conversations about political events or political actors. In particular, Internet memes represent a modern form of political participation, as they are ideologically versatile and can function as political propaganda (Makhortykh & Gonzalez, 2020; Smith 2019), or as a digital form of activism and protest (Fang, 2020; Milner, 2013; Hristova, 2014). Despite the centrality of Internet memes in political communication, both as political propaganda and media protest, they have remained unstudied for many years. To address this issue, this study undertakes an empirical analysis combining digital and qualitative methods, investigating the use of Internet memes to support the anti-establishment digital protest of Mahsa Amini. Based on three criteria, i.e., visual data, young user base and availability of data, Instagram has been used as a platform for scraping data, following the medium #Hairforfreedom. From the initial dataset of 415 data points, we obtained a smaller sample of 225, removing manually those photos and videos which were not considered as Internet memes and did not present the pattern chosen. In order to analyze the final dataset, two research techniques were adopted with the aim to answer the research questions. Firstly, a hashtags and co-hashtags analysis was performed to investigate the values and symbols employed to label the Internet memes of the dataset. Secondly, the final selected Internet memes were presented and analyzed performing a visual analysis, in order to define significance of the memes as semiotic works. The study demonstrates that the main character of Amini's protest is the women. Young girls and women, coming from all segments of the society became the main character of the Revolution. Following the medium, hashtag #Hairforfreedom, the study outlines the main symbol of the Revolution, which is the practice of cutting locks of hair. As the research demonstrates, the practice of cutting locks of hair can be traced back to thousands of years where it was employed to convey anguish and mourning. This study also demonstrates the central role of Internet memes as a vehicle for political expression and participation. Indeed, the results of the study demonstrate the connection between Internet memes and the notion of participatory culture (Jenkins et al., 2007). Moreover, to provoke a higher impact worldwide a lot of celebrities, especially women, with different nationalities and age, began to post selfies and videos of themselves cutting locks. Moreover, the study is able to demonstrate that Internet memes, thanks to their simplicity of manipulation, can make a subject viral. Indeed, Internet memes can transcend geographic boundaries and cultural constructs, creating a lingua franca, a common language to unite dispersed users (Milner, 2016). Furthermore, the use of Internet memes by Iranian protesters offered them anonymity. Davison (2009) points out that Internet memes encourage non-attribution and anonymous participation and unlock new and potentially transgressive or empowering models of communication and participation. Lastly, the study demonstrates that Internet memes, as micro-actions of media, are essential to form collective identities among isolated and marginalized individuals (Xiao Mina, 2014).