Script:
A little over a year ago, a young Kurdish Iranian woman named Jina Mahsa Amini was murdered by Iranian Police, and her death incited the Woman, Life, Freedom protests in Iran. Like thousands of other Iranians in the diaspora, I watched this all unfold on social media primarily through my Instagram account, but this experience was much different than watching previous Iranian protests unfold either, through the television or on Twitter.
As with other social media, on Instagram the Iranian diaspora and supporters banded together to share and elevate the voices of the protesters in Iran. Due to what I'm assuming is its algorithm, Instagram began showing me more and more content from accounts of Iranian creatives from within Iran and the outside. Hungry for information and for ways to help amplify and raise awareness, I followed as many accounts as I could, removed all personal content about my family from my account so I could go public, and tried my best to share what was happening. For the first time, I felt like I belonged to a large community of Iranians, an organically occurring collective with a single shared focus and hope - a deep desire for Iran to be set free from the Islamic Republic.
I bring this all up because as I was reading the chapter on “The Value of Connecting” in David Gauntlett’s book Making Is Connecting, all of these memories came rushing back, particularly when he writes about whether it’s possible to build social capital online. He asserts: “Clearly you can. And online networks of this kind would potentially be powerful both in terms of bridging capital - bringing diverse people together, with no geographical limitations - and bonding capital - creating a strong in-group spirit as they share both knowledge and emotions (142).”
Of course, as the months waned on, various factions within the diaspora had competing interests and that initial sense of community dissipated quite a bit, but I saw then and felt deeply the in-group spirit we shared in our collective grief and hope. It also made me aware of a whole new community of makers, creatives who would face extreme persecution in Iran and who have carved an imperfect eco-system that exemplifies the ideas of bridging capital and bonding capital.
Later in text, Gauntlett summarizes the findings of researcher John Field on the topic of social capital theory. He writes, “social capital is not only a theoretical tool for thinking about the importance of social connections and civic engagement: rather, there is ‘abundant evidence that social capital actually affects the outcomes of social behaviour’ and is therefore a powerful force in its own right” (144).
In the context of the early days of the Woman Life Freedom movement, what creatives made and what the community helped amplify may have led to some significant outcomes of social behavior. They drew attention and support from entertainers who brought the message to a world stage. Supporters cut their hair in solidarity worldwide. Politicians “adopted” political prisoners to help prevent their executions at the hands of the state. Thousands voted to award Shervin Hajipour’s protest anthem “Baraye” a Grammy, which he won in 2023 in the category of “Best Song for Social Change.” And this year, Narges Mohammadi was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for her activism and fight against the oppression of women in Iran.
The Iranian makers, whether they uploaded videos capturing protest footage, dance, gestures, or art, connected many of us to a newfound conceptualization of what it means to be part of the diasporic Iranian community – and they lit up a network of paths that showed us how various kinds of making is connecting. What remains to be seen is whether these connections will endure and if so, what comes next?
