A Study on the Plural and Networked Agency in Social Protests in Iran: 2017-2021

From 1990 decade upward, due to reasons such as spreading of structural developments, modernization, globalization and information and communication revolution, we have seen the politisization of various identities and agents and social movements have acted as great umbrella for covering and leadership of protests. Social protests in 2010s are a turning point in new history of Iran due to formal and substantive differences with former social movements. In these protests, the masses, workers, guilds and youth spontaneously were in the streets for furthering of economic, social and political demands. This study tries to answer these questions: what were the participants’ incentives in 2017-2021 protests and what were their manners of participation and awareness related to protests programs (time, local and slogans)? This research has been done in framework of the two theories namely “street politics” and “networked society” and field methodology by semi-structured technique. The total finding of this study follows that: the content analysis of interviews showed the first position for economic demands as main incentive of participation in protest activism and social and political one’s in the second and third positions respectively, especially the economic incentives had the first positions for youth. Decreasing of trust to national mass media as well as high capacities of virtual social media and satellite TVs such as organizing and communicating led to tendency to them for awareness and participating in these protests.