Introduction: The expansion of social media has transformed the ways political crises, conflicts, and wartime experiences are represented and interpreted. War is no longer narrated solely by official institutions or legacy media; users also participate in the production of meaning through captions, images, hashtags, and everyday digital interactions. Among social media platforms, Instagram has emerged as a significant space for expressing emotion, identity, memory, and collective belonging. Its visual-textual architecture enables users not only to document events but also to frame them symbolically and affectively. This study examines the digital narrative of the Twelve-Day War through Instagram captions posted under the hashtags “Homeland,” “Iran,” and “War.” It draws upon the intersection of netnography, digital storytelling, and hashtag-based meaning-making. From this perspective, hashtags are not merely classificatory tools; they function as discursive nodes that connect dispersed posts to shared interpretations and collective emotions. The study asks how users constructed a networked narrative of the war and how their captions represented national identity, attachment to homeland, solidarity, martyrdom, resistance, ethical judgment, and the lived experience of crisis.
Methods: This study employed a qualitative netnographic approach. Netnography was selected because it enables an in-depth examination of cultural expression, symbolic practices, and social interaction within digitally mediated environments. The field of study consisted of publicly accessible Instagram captions posted during the Twelve-Day War under the selected hashtags. Purposive sampling was employed. Captions were included if they related to the wartime period, referred directly or indirectly to the conflict, and contained sufficient textual depth for interpretation. Posts conveying emotional, symbolic, national, ethical, or experiential meanings were prioritized for analysis. Because the study focused on discourse and meaning-making, the caption served as the primary unit of analysis. Digital research ethics were observed by analyzing only publicly available posts, avoiding interaction with users, and removing all identifying information. The data were analyzed using multilevel thematic analysis. Captions were read repeatedly and coded inductively. Similar codes were subsequently grouped into thematic clusters, which were then organized into broader identity-based, value-based, and symbolic dimensions. The analysis proceeded iteratively between the data, coding, and interpretation. Trustworthiness was enhanced through systematic coding, constant comparison, purposive variation, and thematic saturation.
Findings: Findings show that Instagram captions using the hashtags “Homeland,” “Iran,” and “War” have constructed diverse digital narratives of national identity and wartime experience. Under the “Homeland” hashtag, the nation is represented beyond its geographical territory as an emotional, historical, ethical, and symbolic construct, with national identity portrayed as a moral-emotional bond rather than an abstract concept. Resistance is framed not merely in military terms but as encompassing scientific, cultural, spiritual, and intergenerational dimensions, while martyrdom is depicted as a means of preserving collective memory and forging heroic identities. The captions also reveal dual ethical boundary-making, as some view silence during crisis as betrayal, whereas others prioritize unity and tolerance over differences—highlighting the heterogeneity of these digital war narratives. Under the “Iran” hashtag, the nation serves as the focal point of pride, mourning, and solidarity, and a key finding is that political criticism does not necessarily conflict with loyalty to Iran as a homeland and historical memory; these captions incorporate both religious sentiments and humanitarian concerns, such as women’s resilience and economic hardship. Finally, under the “War” hashtag, insecurity, fear, and psychological vulnerability are prominent, yet alongside these, hope, prayer, family support, and transnational empathy emerge as important sources of resilience.
Conclusion: The findings demonstrate that the examined hashtags functioned as infrastructures for collective meaning-making during the Twelve-Day War. Instagram users did not merely report events; they actively constructed a networked narrative through which fear, grief, resistance, sacrifice, criticism, hope, and national attachment were interpreted, negotiated, and shared. Instagram therefore operated as a platform for affective publics, collective memory, and the ongoing reconstruction of national identity. The study further suggests that the concept of “homeland” was reconstituted as a dynamic cultural formation rather than a fixed territorial entity. Through emotional language, symbolic references, moral judgments, and personal memories, users connected individual experiences to broader narratives of nationhood and crisis. In this respect, netnography proved particularly effective in uncovering the implicit cultural, symbolic, and discursive dimensions of wartime digital storytelling.