Introduction: In recent years, the long-standing conflict between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Zionist regime has also increasingly entered the cognitive phase. Using its cyber and media capabilities, the Israeli regime has placed direct targeting of the psyche and social cohesion of Iranian citizens on its agenda. Few studies have addressed the question of how ordinary citizens - who are the main targets of these attacks - operate in cognitive warfare? And how they transform “narrative” from a tool for media propaganda into a weapon for “reality construction” and digital resistance? Therefore, studying the media activism of political activists on Instagram can help to better understand the mechanisms of crisis representation, meaning production, and symbolic mobilization in the context of social networks. Focusing on this theoretical gap, the present study attempts to analyze the activism of political activists on Instagram and show how they confront the enemy’s psychological operations by producing “counter-narratives” and strategies such as normalizing life. Accordingly, this research seeks to analyze the content of Iranian political activists’ media activism on Instagram during the 12-day war and examines the themes, components, and expressive methods used in this activism.
Methods: In the present study, a qualitative approach was used. Content analysis was used to analyze the mechanisms of meaning production in social posts. The unit of analysis in this study is posts published on the Instagram platform. The sampling was of a non-random purposeful type, in which 55 posts were selected in accordance with the research criteria, which was ultimately sufficient by taking advantage of theoretical saturation and the researcher achieved the final result. The criterion for selecting the sample was to include posts and content produced by political activists during the critical period of the 12-day war of the Zionist regime against Iran.
Findings: In this study, the data analysis process was based on Brown and Clark’s (2006) three-stage coding model. In the first stage (open coding), basic concepts and meaningful propositions were extracted from the text of the posts. In this stage, each meaningful sentence, word, or symbol was considered as an initial code. For example, phrases such as “blood of martyrs,” “united nation,” “strong Iran,” or “national stance” were identified as meaningful signs in the very first stage, because each of them carried an emotional, political, or identity-related charge. Also, images of the Iranian flag, photos of martyrs, videos of rallies, and stories of sympathy were examined as meaningful data alongside the written text. In the second stage (axial coding or organized concepts), similar codes in terms of meaning, orientation, and function were grouped into categories that had a common nature. These categories represented recurring patterns in the posts. For example, posts that simultaneously included condolences to the families of the martyrs, emotional hashtags, and representations of the suffering of children and women were grouped into a semantic cluster and linked to the category of “emotional-humanistic statements.” Meanwhile, posts that emphasized condemnation of aggression, the right to self-defense, or criticism of the silence of international institutions were organized under “political-military stances.” This classification method shows that the data were not limited to the expression of emotions alone, but moved from the level of emotion to the level of political meaning-making and social mobilization. In the third stage (selective coding or general concepts), the categories from the second stage were combined at higher levels of abstraction based on internal relationships and semantic overlap to form the main themes of the research. Based on this, five main themes were identified, each reflecting part of the logic of political activists’ media activism. Taken together, these themes show that Instagram was not simply a platform for disseminating news during the 12-Day War, but rather a space for connecting emotion, identity, action, and narrative. The abundance of categories also indicates that political activism in this context relied more on emotion and empathy than anything else, and then moved towards taking a position and practical mobilization. Of the 37 categories extracted, the highest semantic density was related to actions that were directly linked to the memory of martyrs, the suffering of civilians, and national solidarity. During the 12-day war in Iran, political activists on Instagram have used the visual and interactive platform of this network to represent collective emotions, political stances, and social mobilization. The highest frequency is related to emotional-human expressions (17 posts), which reflect the users’ efforts to arouse empathy, strengthen national cohesion, and emotionally legitimize the resistance. Next in order are political-military positions and calls for action (14 posts).
Conclusion: Content analysis of political activists’ Instagram posts during Iran’s 12-Day War revealed that this group’s media activism followed a multidimensional and strategic pattern on the cognitive battlefield; a pattern that began with emotional-humanistic expressions (with a frequency of 30.9%) as the initial driver of national solidarity, continued with political-military stances (25.5%) to legitimize the resistance, and evolved with activist calls (18.2%), representations of civilian victims (14.5%), and symbolic-stylistic features (10.9%) to practical mobilization and visual narrative construction. These findings establish Instagram not only as a platform for expressing emotions, but also as a cognitive battlefield where Iranian activists reconstructed the narrative of resistance against enemy propaganda and strengthened national resilience by humanizing victims, criticizing Zionist aggression, and organizing virtual-real gatherings.