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 @HerryNapit: Good morningg Iranians,
Knocking off turbans of mullahs has become a sport for Iranian teens in Iran.
Say hi to Khamenei… |
RT @sinavaliollah: اینکه مسئولان تهران همش از ساختمونهای ناامن و زلزله و بلایای طبیعی صحبت میکنن طبیعیه؟!
#MahsaAmini
#مهسا_امینی |
@iranianpapi #MahsaAmini #toomaj_Salehi |
RT @Action4IR: @StateDeptSpox @FIFAWorldCup Coverage plz!
@washingtonpost @nytimes @bbcpersian @guardian @WSJ @reuters @TIME @cnni @bbcnews… |
RT @emilykschrader: Hey @elonmusk we’ve got a big issue going on Twitter with pro-Iran regime accounts threatening Iranians abroad, includi… |
RT @BehdinEran: Yoga instructor Sharareh Saebi Monfared #شراره_صائبی_منفرد was arrested by the security forces in her home on the 29th of… |
RT @Action4IR: @NazaninBoniadi Hossein Ronaghi, an Iranian blogger, and human rights activist, is in danger. He has been jailed for more th… |
RT @Action4IR: @StateDeptSpox @FIFAWorldCup Coverage plz!
@washingtonpost @nytimes @bbcpersian @guardian @WSJ @reuters @TIME @cnni @bbcnews… |
@Roozbeh1963 اگر مينويسم:
#حسین_رونقی را آزاد كنيد
#حسین_رونقی را آزاد كنيد
#حسین_رونقی را آزاد كنيد
#حسین_رونقی را آزاد كنيد
#Hossein_Ronaghi
معنيش اين نيست كه تنها او مهم است، همه ي زندانيان سياسي بايد آزاد شوند. ولي وقت براي #حسین_رونقی خيلي تنگ است، خيلي…
#مهسا_امينی
#MahsaAmini |
RT @shahinnajafi80: منطق جمهوری اسلامی بر پایه ایجاد ترس و تفرقه شکل گرفته است. هرکس به هر عنوان پیرو این منطق ایجاد تفرقه در انقلاب باشد،… |
RT @Action4IR: @TheDrIman Hossein Ronaghi's life is in danger. He has been jailed for more than 40 days while his two legs have been broken… |
RT @Omid_M: Powerful remarks by the German chancellor @OlafScholz: “our principal focus is on all those responsible for this violence…we wa… |
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.