The document discusses a study conducted by Small Media on Iran's conservative cyber-activists known as the "Arzeshi" during and after the 2013 Iranian presidential election. The study analyzed the Arzeshi presence on blogs, Google+, and Twitter to understand the diversity and influence of this pro-government community. It finds that while Iranian officials claim there are tens of thousands of Arzeshi, the truth is more complex. The study aims to tell the story of the Arzeshi through the major political issues they care about and their opinions on the candidates in the election.

1. presented by:
UNMASKING
T H E A R ZES H I
Iran’s Conservative Cyber-Activists and the 2013 Presidential Election

2. From December 2012 to August 2013, Small Media was busy following the activities and
discussions taking place within Iran’s ‘Arzeshi’ community. The ‘Arzeshi’ are Iranian online
conservative activists who remain deeply devoted to the Supreme Leader, and powerfully
influenced by the revolutionary values of the state. Taking in a number of online platforms,
our study looks at the Arzeshi presence on the blogosphere, as well as their Google+ and
Twitter communities.
Iranian officials have claimed there to be tens of thousands of Arzeshi activists online, busily
combating reformists and anti-government protesters in cyberspace. But are these figures
accurate? And is there really a single, unified bloc of conservative activists, or is the truth
more complex?
We’d like to tell you the story of the Arzeshi over the course of the 2013 presidential election.
We’ll walk you through the big political issues they care about, draw out the diversity of the
community’s opinions, and then assess just how much influence these hardcore supporters
of the Supreme Leader have in Iranian cyberspace.

3. PIECING TOGETHER THE ARZESHI COMMUNITY
Google+
Twitter
Blogs
BLOGS
In February 2013, we took our list of 150 active Arzeshi blogs, and indexed the thousands of
links we harvested from their landing pages. We then repeated this same ‘crawling’ process
on all of these new links, giving us hundreds of thousands more. This ‘two-step crawl’ was
repeated before, during, and after the 2013 presidential elections. Our extended network is
built from more than a million links.

4. PIECING TOGETHER THE ARZESHI COMMUNITY
Google+
Twitter
Blogs
GOOGLE+
We started our Google+ research by looking at the 60 bloggers from our original blogs list
who also had Google+ accounts. We called the Google+ API (Application Programming Interface), and gathered the 100 most recent activities (+1s, comments, and reshares) from
each of these users. We repeated this before, during, and after the elections.

5. PIECING TOGETHER THE ARZESHI COMMUNITY
Google+
Twitter
Blogs
TWITTER
Firstly, our research team compiled a list of 75 known Arzeshi Twitter users. Then, we called
the Twitter API to gather the IDs of who they follow, of who follows them, the number of
tweets they’ve published and the date they registered on Twitter.

6. So what do we mean when we use the term ‘Arzeshi’? Why did we choose this
term, rather than ‘pro-government’ or ‘conservative’? And can we be sure that this
is the way the community identifies itself?

7. ARZESHI VS CONSERVATIVE
ARZESHI
CONSERVATIVE
188 43
METHODOLOGY
It is unclear exactly where the term Arzeshi originated from,
but has been used as an identifying label by online Iranian
conservative activists since the disputed 2009 elections, being
favoured over mohafezeh-kar, the more literal translation of the
term ‘conservative’.
The term Arzeshi translates literally as ‘Valued’, and signifies the
loyalty these users feel to the founding principles of the 1979
Islamic Revolution.
To see which term was most widespread within the community,
we took the top five blogs in our network during January, and
‘scraped’ all of the text from their front pages. We then counted
the number of times that the bloggers used the terms Arzeshi
and mohafezeh-kar. The results turned out in favour of Arzeshi,
so this is the term we’ll use.

8. We’ve established the name of the community. But next we’d like to build an impression of its politics, firstly by seeing which politician’s website received the most
links from the Arzeshi blogging network.

9. SIGNIFICANT POLITICAL FIGURES
Ali Khamenei
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Saeed Jalili
4622 IN-LINKS
974 IN-LINKS
197 IN-LINKS
Supreme Leader Khamenei casts the largest shadow
over the Arzeshi community, by far.
Former President Ahmadinejad and his potential replacements
were of far less interest to Arzeshi bloggers, with comparatively few
bloggers linking to their official websites.

10. To understand why the Supreme Leader is such an influential figure amongst the
Arzeshi, it’d be helpful to give a quick run-down of how the Iranian regime is structured.

11. STRUCTURE OF REGIME
PARLIAMENT
The Iranian Parliament is made up of 290 seats, with elections being held every
four years. Candidates that wish to stand for Parliament must first be vetted
and approved by Iran’s Guardian Council to ensure that they meet the state’s
strict religious, educational and political standards.

12. STRUCTURE OF REGIME
GUARDIAN COUNCIL
The Guardian Council is the body responsible for vetting election candidates
and approving legislation. Half of its members are clerics appointed by the
Supreme Leader, whilst the other half are jurists elected by the Parliament.

13. STRUCTURE OF REGIME
ASSEMBLY OF EXPERTS
The Guardian Council is the body responsible for vetting election candidates
and approving legislation. Half of its members are clerics appointed by the
Supreme Leader, whilst the other half are jurists elected by the Parliament.

14. STRUCTURE OF REGIME
EXPEDIENCY COUNCIL
The Expediency Council is a body wholly appointed by the Supreme Leader.
Its role is to act as an advisory body to the Supreme Leader, whilst also being
responsible for settling any disputes between the Parliament and the Guardian
Council.

15. STRUCTURE OF REGIME
MEDIA CONTROL
The Supreme Leader exerts immense control over the official media organisations of Iran. He is directly responsible for appointing and overseeing the activities of the head of state broadcaster IRIB.

16. STRUCTURE OF REGIME
MILITARY CONTROL
As well as being the commander-in-chief of Iran’s armed forces and Revolutionary Guard, the Supreme Leader also exerts extensive influence over paramilitary organisations such as the Basij.

17. STRUCTURE OF REGIME
CULTURAL CONTROL
The Supreme Leader is very outspoken against Western cultural encroachment
on Iran. He consistently works to advance a narrowly-defined religious conception of national culture.

18. Khamenei wasn’t able to directly intervene in the 2013 elections, however:
his influence was felt through the Guardian Council.

19. WHO IS THE GUARDIAN COUNCIL?
SUPREME LEADER
THE SUPREME LEADER SELECTS
THE 6 CLERICS OF THE GUARDIAN
COUNCIL
GUARDIAN COUNCIL
THE PARLIAMENT VOTES
FOR THE 6 JURISTS OF THE
GUARDIAN COUNCIL
PARLIAMENT
MEMBERS OF THE PARLIAMENT GET PRE-SELECTED BY THE
GUARDIAN COUNCIL BEFORE THE PUBLIC CAN VOTE FOR THEM

20. The Guardian Council was responsible for whittling the 686 applications for the
Presidency down to a more manageable field. Up next is an overview of the process.
Click on the labels to learn more about the applicants.

21. 686
PEOPLE APPLIED FOR
PRESIDENCY IN 2013
GENDER
EDUCATION
30
656
89
212
153
116
FEMALE
APPLICANTS
MALE
APPLICANTS
APPLICANTS ACHIEVING
PHD
APPLICANTS ACHIEVING
BACHELORS DEGREE
APPLICANTS ACHIEVING
MASTERS DEGREE
60
APPLICANTS WITHOUT A
HIGH SCHOOL DIPLOMA
APPLICANTS WITH
RELIGIOUS SEMINARY
EDUCATION
APPLICANTS WITH UNKNOWN
QUALIFICATIONS
APPLICANTS WITH A
HIGH SCHOOL DIPLOMA
AGE
78
66
86
125
101
60
5
OCCUPATION
APPLICANTS AGED
UNDER 30
APPLICANTS AGED
BETWEEN 30 - 35
APPLICANTS AGED
BETWEEN 36 - 40
APPLICANTS AGED
BETWEEB 41 - 45
APPLICANTS AGED
BETWEEN 46 - 50
87
83
32
10
74
APPLICANTS AGED
BETWEEN 51 - 55
APPLICANTS AGED
BETWEEN 56-60
APPLICANTS AGED
BETWEEN 61 -65
APPLICANTS AGED
BETWEEN 66 - 70
APPLICANTS AGED
OVER 71
198
89
91
94
25
SELF EMPLOYED
PEOPLE APPLIED
POLITICIANS
APPLIED
UNIVERSITY
PROFESSORS APPLIED
RETIREES
APPLIED
DOCTORS
APPLIED
20
48
17
14
36
LAWYERS
APPLIED
TEACHERS
APPLIED
ARMY PERSONNEL
APPLIED
CLERICS
APPLIED
UNEMPLOYED PEOPLE
APPLIED

22. Of the 686 applicants, only 38 sufficiently met the Guardian Council’s educational, political and religious standards to make the shortlist.

23. 38
APPLICANTS WERE
SHORTLISTED
GENDER
0
38
FEMALE
APPLICANTS
MALE
APPLICANTS
EDUCATION
21
2
10
0
APPLICANTS ACHIEVING
PHD
APPLICANTS ACHIEVING
BACHELORS DEGREE
APPLICANTS ACHIEVING
MASTERS DEGREE
0
5
0
11
10
9
APPLICANTS WITHOUT A
HIGH SCHOOL DIPLOMA
APPLICANTS WITH
RELIGIOUS SEMINARY
EDUCATION
APPLICANTS WITH UNKNOWN
QUALIFICATIONS
8
APPLICANTS WITH A
HIGH SCHOOL DIPLOMA
AGE
0
0
0
0
5
AFFILIATION
INDEPENDENT
APPLICANTS
CONSERVATIVE
APPLICANTS
REFORMIST
APPLICANTS
GOVERNMENT
APPLICANTS
OCCUPATION
APPLICANTS AGED
UNDER 30
APPLICANTS AGED
BETWEEN 30 - 35
APPLICANTS AGED
BETWEEN 36 - 40
APPLICANTS AGED
BETWEEB 41 - 45
APPLICANTS AGED
BETWEEN 46 - 50
10
11
4
4
2
APPLICANTS AGED
BETWEEN 51 - 55
APPLICANTS AGED
BETWEEN 56-60
APPLICANTS AGED
BETWEEN 61 -65
APPLICANTS AGED
BETWEEN 66 - 70
APPLICANTS AGED
OVER 71
2
27
4
1
3
SELF EMPLOYED
PEOPLE APPLIED
POLITICIANS
APPLIED
UNIVERSITY
PROFESSORS APPLIED
RETIREES
APPLIED
DOCTORS
APPLIED
0
0
0
0
0
LAWYERS
APPLIED
TEACHERS
APPLIED
ARMY PERSONNEL
APPLIED
CLERICS
APPLIED
UNEMPLOYED PEOPLE
APPLIED

24. Of these 38 candidates, only 8 made the final cut, taking part in the election campaign.

25. ALIGNMENT
HASSAN ROUHANI
MODERATE
DESCRIPTION
Rouhani is a member of the Assembly of Experts, the Expediency
Council, the Supreme National Security Council, and the former
chief nuclear negotiator.
Prior to the 2013 elections, Rouhani was not considered to be a
particularly outspoken reformist. But his campaign’s promises to
open Iran up to international engagement, prioritise economic recovery, and push for the release of political prisoners helped him to build
a coalition of reformists and moderates that would propel his campaign to victory on election day.
Click on candidates for more info
FINAL RESULT
50.88%

26. MOHAMMAD BAGHER GHALIBAF
DESCRIPTION
The Mayor of Tehran since 2005, former national chief of police, and
former head of the Revolutionary Guard’s air force, Ghalibaf has had
a varied career.
Though the polls marked him out as an early frontrunner, he struggled to define his campaign clearly. His conservative record and his
boasts about personal involvement in crushing the 1999 student
protests ensured that he would struggle to reach many voters outside of his conservative base.
Click on candidates for more info
ALIGNMENT
CONSERVATIVE
FINAL RESULT
16.46%

27. ALIGNMENT
SAEED JALILI
CONSERVATIVE
DESCRIPTION
The stern, devout and ultra-hardline Jalili was Iran’s top nuclear negotiator from 2007-13.
He served as something of a boogeyman to reformists over the
course of the 2013 elections. A serious contender early on in the
campaign, Jalili’s popularity amongst his hardline religious base was
ultimately not sufficient to secure him victory.
Click on candidates for more info
FINAL RESULT
11.31%

28. MOHAMMAD REZA AREF
DESCRIPTION
Aref is a former Minister of Technology, who served in the Khatami
administration.
Aref ran a fairly uninspiring campaign, reflected in his low polling
numbers. He withdrew on June 11, arguing that reformist voters
should rally around Hassan Rouhani.
Click on candidates for more info
ALIGNMENT
REFORMIST
FINAL RESULT
WITHDREW

29. MOHAMMAD GHARAZI
DESCRIPTION
Former Oil Minister, and Minister of Post, Telephone and Telegraph in
the 1980s.
Gharazi’s sudden return to frontline politics baffled many, and his
single-note campaign promising to combat inflation excited few. So
few, in fact, that there were roughly three times as many spoiled ballots than there were votes for Gharazi.
Click on candidates for more info
ALIGNMENT
MODERATE
FINAL RESULT
1.22%

30. GHOLAM-ALI HADDAD-ADEL
DESCRIPTION
Adel formerly served as Deputy Minister in the Ministry of Islamic
Culture and Guidance, was a former Parliamentary Speaker, and is
currently an advisor to the Supreme Leader.
His closeness to the Supreme Leader did him no favours in the
campaign. After struggling to break into double-digits in the polls,
Adel withdrew in the early stages of the race. He endorsed no individual candidate, but warned against the dangers of electing a reformist or moderate.
Click on candidates for more info
ALIGNMENT
CONSERVATIVE
FINAL RESULT
WITHDREW

31. MOHAMMAD GHARAZI
DESCRIPTION
Rezaee served as the head of the Revolutionary Guard in the 1980s,
and subsequently as the head of Iran’s Expediency Council.
Rezaee is an experienced presidential candidate, having stood in
both the 2005 and 2009 contests. This experience did little to help
him in 2013 however. Basing his campaign around economic liberalisation and pledges to reduce Iran’s oil dependence, he failed to
make a real mark on the race.
Click on candidates for more info
ALIGNMENT
CONSERVATIVE
FINAL RESULT
10.55%

32. ALI AKBAAR VELAYATI
DESCRIPTION
Velayati is one of a very small number of individuals who can boast
of maintaining a position in front-line politics since the 1979 Revolution, serving as Minister for Foreign Affairs from 1981-1997, then as
a hard-line member of the Expediency Council and as international
affairs advisor to the Supreme Leader.
This long career in politics did him few favours in the presidential
race. Perhaps the highlight of his campaign was a six-minute campaign video featuring Velayati sitting in an empty cinema, weeping
at revolutionary films. This film failed to ignite his campaign, and he
finished in fifth place.
Click on candidates for more info
ALIGNMENT
CONSERVATIVE
FINAL RESULT
6.16%

33. OFFICIAL RESULTS OF THE 2013 ELECTIONS
In the end, Hassan Rouhani’s victory was a convincing one: he
attracted over three times as many votes as Ghalibaf, his strongest
conservative rival.
If the Guardian Council filters out any contentious candidates, then
how far do elections matter in Iran? Shouldn’t the Arzeshi be content with any of the permitted candidates?
Although many amongst the Arzeshi have claimed that the election was lost as a result of conservative disunity, the reality is that
Rouhani narrowly secured an absolute majority: even combining
the totals of his conservative rivals, Rouhani emerges on top with
50.9% of the national vote.
Not quite. The track record of the previous two presidents demonstrates that election outcomes can have significant implications for
government policy.

34. FOREIGN POLICY
ROUND 1
REFORMIST
CONSERVATIVE
Khatami
1997-2005
Ahmadinejad
2005-2013
VS
In 2013, Khatami’s government proposed a ‘Grand
Bargain’ to the United States that would open up a
full diplomatic dialogue over isses such as:
W idthdrawl
of support to
Hezbollah
Transparent
nuclear
negotiations
Co-operation
to stablise
Iraq
The Initiative was rejected outright by the
Bush administration
During Ahmadinejad’s presidential term, diplomatic
relations between Iran and the West completely broke
down, resulting in a number of tense incidents:
2009 - 11
2007 Seizure
of Royal Navy imprisonment
sailors in the
of three
Americans
Persian Gulf
2011 raid on
the British
Embassy
Consequently, this period also saw ruinous
economic sanctions imposed against Iran.

35. WOMENS RIGHTS
ROUND 2
REFORMIST
CONSERVATIVE
Khatami
1997-2005
Ahmadinejad
2005-2013
VS
The Khatami years saw a number of notable
advancements in women’s rights, including:
Appointment
of women to
government
posts
Reintroduction of Family
Protection
Law
Minimum age
for marriage
was raised
But the onwards march of the women’s rights
movement was halted during the Ahmadinejad years.
This period saw:
Closure of
women’s
publication
Zanan
Stricter dress
code laws
Stage
encouraged
large families

36. WOMENS RIGHTS
ROUND 2
REFORMIST
CONSERVATIVE
Khatami
1997-2005
Ahmadinejad
2005-2013
VS
Opportunities for free cultural expression expanded
dramatically during the Khatami years.
His government tried (and failed) to pass a law legalising the ownership of satellite TV dishes.
Property seizures and arrests relating to satellite TV
consumption fell during this period. However.
Ahmadinejad’s government oversaw an intensified
campaign to lessen the cultural impact of satellite TV
and the Internet.
Private satellite dishes were destroyed in large numbers by basiji militias. Satellite jamming technology
was introduced, and internet censorship programmes
were stepped up.

37. So how did the Arzeshi react to the election of the moderate Rouhani in June?
These reactions collected from Google+ demonstrate a generally downcast mood.

38. GOOGLE+ USERS’ ELECTION REACTIONS
Click on the speech bubbles for more info

48. Noting the Arzeshi’s rejection of the new president, we thought it’d be interesting to see
whether the Arzeshi blogging community engaged with the conservative press, which
was similarly hostile to Rouhani.

49. The chart below shows the big Iranian media owners, with segments sized by the
number of links Arzeshi bloggers made to their news sites. Mouse-over the image to
see which presidential candidates these media owners backed in 2013:
Jalili scooped up a great deal of establishment support.

50. ARZESHI MEDIA ENGAGEMENT
JALILI
REZAEI
HADAD
GHALIBAF
N/A

51. This shows us how the Arzeshi interact with the ‘old media’ institutions of the
conservative press. But how do these same bloggers make use of social networking
sites? And do they respect the state’s censorship policies, and stick to statesanctioned networks like Afsaran and Cloob? Or do they use Facebook and Twitter
in spite of the restrictions?

52. The map below shows how users connected to different social networking sites at
each data collection point in our study. The outer ring is made up of the individual users
that linked to a social networking site at each point, and the inner ring is comprised of
the social networks themselves, sized by the number of links they received.

53. Click on the labels on the right-hand side to toggle the display of users’ links to each site.
For example, clicking ‘Facebook’ will show all of the links Arzeshi pages made to the site.

54. SOCIAL NETWORK LINKS - DECEMBER
All blocked sites

55. SOCIAL NETWORK LINKS - DECEMBER
All non-blocked sites

56. SOCIAL NETWORK LINKS - JUNE
All blocked sites

57. SOCIAL NETWORK LINKS - JUNE
All non-blocked sites

58. SOCIAL NETWORK LINKS - AUGUST
All blocked sites

59. SOCIAL NETWORK LINKS - AUGUST
All non-blocked sites

60. Next up, we’ll take a closer look at our wider blogging network.
There was a staggering volume of data here, so we’ve broken the important information
down into some more manageable chunks.

61. THE ARZESHI BLOGSPHERE
We gathered our blogging data at three separate time points - in February,
June and August. Taking samples from timepoints months apart, we expected
to see some gradual changes in the structure of the network.
However, we actually saw that there was a striking contunuity in the structure
of the network across each of our data points.

62. THE ARZESHI BLOGSPHERE
So rather than taking each of these data sets in turn, we decided to take an
average of our statistics from across the three time points and to analyse the
average make-up of the network over the whole period.
This way, rather than drowning in a sea of superfluous data, we could focus
on analysing the actual content of the blogs in the network.

63. THE ARZESHI BLOGSPHERE
WHAT DO I SEE HERE?
This circle represents the average size of our
blogging network across the period studied. From
this data it would appear that the Arzeshi blogging
network is in fact made up of tens of thousands
of blogs and websites, which may suggest there
to be some element of truth in the government’s
claims for the existence of an online legion of conservative Arzeshi activists.
Then we started to dig deeper. Click on the networks below to see which blogs remained when we
started filtering out the ones that received the least
links. For example, clicking on the [>5] network will
eliminate all of the blogs that received fewer than
5 links from other sites in the Arzeshi network. The
[>100] network, meanwhile, shows only the most
well-read blogs that received over 100 links.
Click on a group for more info

64. THE ARZESHI BLOGSPHERE
WHAT DO I SEE HERE?
We found that 42264 blogs and websites were
connected to our network by only a single link:
that’s 62.5% of our total. Such tenuous connections imply that these blogs are either not sufficiently related to our network to be considered
Arzeshi, or instead that these blogs, whilst similar
in style and content to other Arzeshi blogs, simply
have no readership or influence.
SINGLE
We took a closer look at a number of these onelink wonders. Read more about some of these
blogs below.
42264
Click on a post for more info. Find more content analysis online
TIMEPOINT 1
TIMEPOINT 2
x
TIMEPOINT 3
x

65. THE ARZESHI BLOGSPHERE
OSVAH.PERSIANBLOG.IR
BLOG NAME
Osveh
SINGLE
BLOG DESCRIPTION
This blog copies content from news websites and
other online sources.
42264
TIMEPOINT 1
TIMEPOINT 2
x
TIMEPOINT 3
x

66. THE ARZESHI BLOGSPHERE
WHAT DO I SEE HERE?
There is another sharp drop when we look at the
sites receiving 10 or more links from our network.
On average, only 3564 of the sites in our network that’s 5.3% of our total - managed to attract 10 or
more links from elsewhere.
>5
8613
Click on a post for more info. Find more content analysis online
TIMEPOINT 1
TIMEPOINT 2
x
TIMEPOINT 3
x

67. THE ARZESHI BLOGSPHERE
MKAZEMY.BLOGFA.COM
BLOG NAME
City of God
>5
8613
BLOG DESCRIPTION
Moussa Kazemi is this blog’s author, and is
studying for a MA Political Science degree.
His blog is inactive, and it seems as though
he has retired from blogging for the time being.
TIMEPOINT 1
TIMEPOINT 2
x
TIMEPOINT 3
x

68. THE ARZESHI BLOGSPHERE
WHAT DO I SEE HERE?
There is another sharp drop when we look at the
sites receiving 10 or more links from our network.
On average, only 3564 of the sites in our network that’s 5.3% of our total - managed to attract 10 or
more links from elsewhere.
>10
3564
TIMEPOINT 1
x
TIMEPOINT 2
x
TIMEPOINT 3
x

69. THE ARZESHI BLOGSPHERE
WHAT DO I SEE HERE?
By this point we have lost the vast majority of our
network. An average of 955 sites attract 25 or
more links from our network, representing around
1.4% of our total. Given that these blogs are receiving a modest number of links, we can say that
the blogs represented from here on out are more
regularly updated, and richer in original content.
>25
955
Click on a post for more info. Find more content analysis online
TIMEPOINT 1
TIMEPOINT 2
x
TIMEPOINT 3
x

70. THE ARZESHI BLOGSPHERE
KAF-ALEF.PERSIANBLOG.IR
>25
955
BLOG NAME
A Piece of Heart
POST TITLE
Sattar Beheshti’s arrogance, or FATA?
BLOG DESCRIPTION
Kobra Asoopar is a journalist based at the hardline newspaper Javan - an organisation with close
ties to the IRGC. She has been loudly opposed
to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad since he embraced
Mashaei as a political ally. Similarly to the majority
of the Arzeshi, she strongly supports the Supreme
Leader, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei. In the
2013 election, she supported Gholam Ali Haddad-Adel, but following his withdrawal from the race,
she refused to comment on her election choices.
BLOG DESCRIPTION
Asoopar strongly criticized Iran’s Cyber Police
(FATA) for their conduct during the controversy
over the death in custody of blogger Sattar Beheshti. Asoopar argues that Beheshti was originally an insignificant activist, but that his death has
opened the government up to widespread criticism
and popular outrage. She notes that as a consequence of Beheshti’s death, his blog - which
used to receive less than 10 visits per day - has
exploded in popularity.
DATE
14 January 2013
TIMEPOINT 1
TIMEPOINT 2
x
TIMEPOINT 3
x

71. THE ARZESHI BLOGSPHERE
WHAT DO I SEE HERE?
Here, we start to lose all but the active core of
the Arzeshi community. An average of 316 sites
received 50 or more links over the course of this
study, comprising 0.5% of our total network. We
can say, therefore, that around one in every 200
of the sites and blogs in our network could be
considered ‘core Arzeshi’ domains, receiving a
significant number of links from across the Arzeshi
community.
>50
316
Click on a post for more info. Find more content analysis online
TIMEPOINT 1
x
TIMEPOINT 2
TIMEPOINT 3
x

72. THE ARZESHI BLOGSPHERE
AHESTAN.WORDPRESS.COM // AHESTAN.IR
>50
316
BLOG NAME
Ahestan
POST TITLE
Who was the winner of the debates?
BLOG DESCRIPTION
Omid Hosseini is the author of this blog. This address is an older version of his blog ahestan.ir, and
hasn’t been updated since June 2010. Ahestan’s
new address is located at ahestan.ir and is updated regularly.
BLOG DESCRIPTION
Hosseini believes that the last presidential debate
(on the subject of foreign policy) was the best of
the three, arguing that it was particularly significant
due to its subject matter. In his opinion, there was
no clear winner coming out of the debate, although
he says Ali Akbar Velayati, Saeed Jalili and Hassan
Rouhani were better than the other candidates.
LINK
TIMEPOINT 1
x
TIMEPOINT 2
TIMEPOINT 3
x
DATE
7 June 2013

73. THE ARZESHI BLOGSPHERE
WHAT DO I SEE HERE?
The blogs and websites in this segment could be
considered the ‘inner core’ of the Arzeshi community, making up just 0.2% of our total network, on
average. Yet these sites are much more active than
those we see in the outer segment of the network.
>100
We do see one notable change across the period
of our study: a number of high-profile Arzeshi blogs
appear to become somewhat inactive in the aftermath of Rouhani’s election victory.
105
Click on a post for more info. Find more content analysis online
TIMEPOINT 1
x
TIMEPOINT 2
x
TIMEPOINT 3

74. THE ARZESHI BLOGSPHERE
KISTIEMA.BLOGFA.COM // YAMINPOUR.IR
>100
105
BLOG NAME
Who We Are
BLOG DESCRIPTION
Vahid Yaminpour is a prominent Arzeshi blogger
who was previously a television presenter with the
state broadcaster, Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting. He supported Saeed Jalili in the 2013
campaign.
LINK
POST TITLE
In the field of art and culture, will anything
change!?
BLOG DESCRIPTION
This post discusses the newly-appointed Minister of Culture Ali Jannati, as well as providing an
analysis of Rouhani’s cultural policies. Yaminpour
notes that Jannati is a good choice to head up the
ministry, owing to his record as an able diplomat,
though he concedes that he has little background
in cultural matters. In addition, Yaminpour reminded his readers of the ‘soft war’ being waged by the
West against Iranian society. He warns the government to tread a cautious path on cultural matters,
and to be guarded against individuals hijacking the
cultural ministry in the name of ‘freedom of expression’.
DATE
17 August 2013
TIMEPOINT 1
x
TIMEPOINT 2
x
TIMEPOINT 3

75. THE ARZESHI BLOGSPHERE
WHAT DO I SEE HERE?
We’ve looked at one way to measure Arzeshi activity: by looking at the number of links that blogs
receive, we can get an idea of their readership,
and influence.
But another way to measure the Arzeshi community’s activity is by looking at the number of blogs
that linked away to social networking sites and
news sites. This method allows us to assess the
extent of integration between the Arzeshi blogosphere and social media platforms, as well as their
level of engagement with the conservative press.
Click on a group for more info

76. THE ARZESHI BLOGSPHERE
NEWS SITES STORY
NEWS SITES
1472
We’ve already seen that when Arzeshi engage with
media sources, they tend towards conservative
news outlets, but just how much of the overall network links to these sites?
Surprisingly little - at each of our three data collection points, we found that only around 2% of the
Arzeshi network linked to any one of the 22 most
prominent news agencies in our network.
But looking closer at some of our sample blogs, we
start to see why: whereas a lot of content does get
recycled from around the network, Arzeshi users
aren’t very reliable at attributing their news posts.
These are examples of blogs that post a lot of unattributed content from other sites
LINK 1
Click on a group for more info
LINK 2

77. THE ARZESHI BLOGSPHERE
SOCIAL MEIDIA STORY
SOCIAL MEDIA
If old media sources like news sites are poorly
integrated into the wider network, then what about
social media sites? Are they any better-integrated?
No, actually - they fare even worse than the news
sites. The top 11 social networking sites in our
network were linked to by an average of less than
1% of the sites in our network.
633
Click on a group for more info
In part, this may be due to the official state restrictions on social networking sites like Facebook
and Twitter: although Arzeshi operate Google+ and
Twitter accounts fairly openly, attaching actual links
to these forbidden accounts from their blogs may
make them liable to be taken down.
Regardless, the lack of links between blogs and
social networks underlines the disconnected nature
of the Arzeshi community across different platforms - there are very few connections binding the
blogging community to the Google+ and Twitter
Arzeshi.

78. Now we turn to the Arzeshi community on Google+. The most interesting feature of this
community is the active engagement between Arzeshi: whereas Arzeshi blogs are the place to
publish lengthy tracts of political commentary, Google+ offers far more opportunities for
the Arzeshi to exchange opinions and get into debates.

79. The next section maps the relationships between Google+ users, and will show the way in
which Arzeshi users interact with one another’s posts. Make sure to play around with the filters
to get an idea of the network’s structure, and check out the conversation topic maps to see
what the Arzeshi were talking about.

80. Conversation starters are the big players in the Google+ network: they write the posts that people engage with most. Click on each user to highlight their posts in the network.
Conversation keepers are the users that comment on and interact with these posts. Though
they don’t necessarily make popular posts themselves, their comments on other posts keep
the community alive.
Click through the ‘Topics’ labels to read the actual conversations held by Arzeshi activists.
Switch between pre-, mid- and post-election views in the top-left.

81. TO VIEW THIS MAP PLEASE VISIT
UNMASKTHEARZESHI.COM

82. SAMPLE OF CONTENT ANALYSIS

83. SAMPLE OF CONTENT ANALYSIS

84. As well as Google+ we wanted to look at how the Arzeshi community organised itself on Twitter.
So once again, we took 75 high-profile Arzeshi Twitter users that we had been previously
monitoring, and set them as the core of our Arzeshi network.

85. CORE TWITTER USERS
The next chart shows our 75 original Twitter users, the dates they registered on Twitter, and their
number of followers. As you’ll see, one of our users had far more followers than anyone else,
and broke any kind of graph we tried to work with.
We excluded this user from the rest of our Twitter analysis to create a more reflective portrait of
the broader network and to prevent them from skewing things completely.
Why? The account, unsurprisingly in a league of its own, is @Khomeinii1 (watch out for the extra ‘i’), formerly a Twitter fan page for the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini, it has since
been hijacked by an unknown individual.

86. CORE TWITTER USERS
Click on the graph to see it online

87. RECIPROCITY ON TWITTER
In the next image you’ll see a circular graph. Around the outside are our 74 original Twitter
users, ranked anti-clockwise from most-followed to least-followed. The mutual connections
between them are highlighted in red.
There are no mutual connections at all between the 10 most-followed Twitter users in
this network. Only 3 of them have posted recently, and they tend to post only on significant
national or religious holidays.
This typifies the factionalised Arzeshi community and debunks the theory that pro-government propaganda on Twitter is regular and pervasive.

88. RECIPROCITY ON TWITTER

89. We next wanted to see whether this fragmentation and lack of connection existed within the
extended Twitter Arzeshi network - meaning our original 74 users along with all their followers,
and the users they followed.

90. RECIPROCITY AND POLITICAL ALLEGIANCE

91. RECIPROCITY AND POLITICAL ALLEGIANCE

92. RECIPROCITY AND POLITICAL ALLEGIANCE

93. RECIPROCITY AND POLITICAL ALLEGIANCE

94. RECIPROCITY AND POLITICAL ALLEGIANCE

95. RECIPROCITY AND POLITICAL ALLEGIANCE

96. Arzeshi community across
three separate platforms, it is
apparent that the community
is neither as united, nor as
immense as state officials like
to argue.
State claims of a sprawling online network of conservatives are bogus,
with much of the network padded out with low-content pages.
Here’s a summary of what
we’ve learned:
The Arzeshi failed to unite around a single presidential candidate - they are
not a disciplined political force, but a fractious online community like any
other.
The Arzeshi are united in one thing - their utter devotion to Iran’s Supreme
Leader.
The Arzeshi have a number of unofficial ‘leaders’ who
shape conservative opinion across various platforms, with journalists such as
Vahid Yaminpour and Kobra Asoopar leading the charge.
The Arzeshi represent a genuine community - they take
time off from political discussions to form lasting social connections and
share personal stories.

97. Credits:
Senior Researchers
James Marchant
Amin Sabeti
Bronwen Robertson
Ali Fisher
Senior Designer
Maral Pourkazemi
Junior Designers
Isabel Beard
Andrea Paolini
Web Developer
Arturo Cullinane
presented by: