Hugo Velazquez Perez Kovach and Ally Temple (2023) "Crystallized Exposure." This video presents a data visualization of one million posts collected from Twitter in November 2022 using the tag #MahsaAmini. Our aim was to determine how many hashtags were populated from the least to most significant by countries. We needed a way to depict the hashtag's popularity globally. Each crystalized structure represents a country/region. The cluster increases in size while the shape changes. Size represents the increase in the number of tweets.
Jin, Jiyan, Azadi in Iran
(Woman, Life, Freedom)
On 16 September 2022, the 22-year-old Kurdish woman Jina (Mahsa) Amini died in a hospital in Tehran, Iran, under suspicious circumstances. The Guidance Patrol, the religious morality police of Iran's government, arrested Amini for allegedly not wearing the hijab in accordance with government standards. The Law Enforcement Command of the Islamic Republic of Iran stated that she had a heart attack at a police station, collapsed, and fell into a coma before being transferred to a hospital. However, eyewitnesses, including women who were detained with Amini, reported that she was severely beaten and that she died as a result of police brutality, which was denied by the Iranian authorities. The assertions of police brutality, in addition to leaked medical scans, led some observers to believe Amini had a cerebral hemorrhage or stroke due to head injuries received after her arrest.
The significance of her death is multi-layered. While the hashtag #MahsaAmini served as the largest category through which this story was shared across social media, her real Kurdish name was Jina.
As Soha Saghazadeh has guided us on the centrality of the name Jina and the Kurdish root of this chant, see "'Jîna:' Erasure of Kurdish Women and Their Politics from the Uprisings in Iran" by Farangis Ghaderi and Ozlem Goner. The extended version of this article has been published in IJMES, "Jin, Jiyan, Azadi and the Historical Erasure of Kurds." Also, find Jin, Jiyan, and Azadi articulated in transnational joint struggle in this collective statement: "Jin Jiyan Azadî, as in Free Palestine."
#MahsaAmini on Twitter
RT @SophiaAram: Quelle joie de voir le combat des iraniennes et des iraniens contre la théocratie et dont @AlinejadMasih porte la voix depu… |
RT @drninaansary: Another devastating loss! Another victim of the brutal regime in Iran! 19 yr old #Yalda_Aghafazli arrested for participat… |
RT @__Injaneb96: . @womensmarch you are taking away our voice, the true voice of Iranian women by inviting someone that not long ago was at… |
RT @Negah373: Nowadays world is watching women and men in Iran who stand shoulder to shoulder against dictatorship and want justice, freedo… |
RT @iran_e_sabz: #HosseinRonaghi, a human rights activist, was arrested 40 days ago. He is in critical condition and suffers from multiple… |
RT @HerryNapit: Iranians in the streets demand an end to the Islamic Republic. Iranian protesters in Tehran and across Iran chanted:
"Dea… |
RT @arminarefi: NOUVELLE FAÇON de protester en #Iran : coller au dos d’un mollah de la ville sainte de Qom (centre de l’#Iran) un papier su… |
RT @mdubowitz: “Israel supports the women of Iran": The videos and content @IsraelMFA posted on social networks received 85 million views.… |
RT @sinavaliollah: تفرقه و اختلاف و جدایی و شک و خشم و ترس، تنها ابزار و تخصص رسانههای حکومته. نفع مردم هیچوقت هدفشون نبوده. وحشت اونا از… |
@indypersian والله سر ناموس خودمون رو می بُریم
👆🏻جایگاه "زن" توی حکومت اسلامی
#مهسا_امینی
#MahsaAmini |
RT @hasanakevazir1: @alikarimi_ak8 همه ما سرما زده یک زمستان هستم
#MahsaAmini https://t.co/PQaIJKhxWy |
RT @NazaninBoniadi: Indeed. No one in Iran is calling for reform. The reform movement is dead. The Iranian people want the Islamic Republic… |
Network Visualization on half a million tweets on #MahsaAmini circulating among 60,000 users in November 2022. The red tweets are in Farsi, the green are English, and the white are French.