Call for Papers
Iran Amid Crises: War, Media, Repression, and the Future of Democratic Movements
Proposed special issue for Media, War & Conflict
Guest editor: Hossein Kermani, University of Vienna
Iran has witnessed repeated waves of nationwide contention since the establishment of the Islamic Republic. From the Green Movement of 2009 to the November 2019 protests, the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising of 2022, and the 2025–26 protest wave, each cycle of contention has unfolded under shifting configurations of authoritarian repression, media infrastructures, economic crisis, international pressure, and civic organization. Yet the most recent cycle marks a qualitatively distinct conjuncture. It emerged not only as another confrontation between society and the Islamic Republic, but as a crisis shaped by the overlap of mass protest, extreme state violence, wartime conditions, prolonged communication disruption, leadership rupture, and intensified information warfare.
The 2025–26 protests and the subsequent U.S.–Israel war against Iran created an unprecedented political and communicative environment. Reports by human rights organizations and international media point to mass lethal violence, large-scale arrests, accelerated judicial proceedings, political executions, asset confiscations, and the criminalization of dissent under the language of national security and wartime necessity. The Islamic regime’s response illustrates a familiar but intensified authoritarian repertoire: kinetic repression on the streets; legal repression through courts, executions, and intimidation; infrastructural repression through internet shutdowns and communication control; and symbolic repression through propaganda, conspiracy narratives, and the portrayal of protesters as agents of foreign intelligence.
The war did not suspend domestic repression; rather, it appears to have enabled and internationalized it. The killing of Ali Khamenei, the long-serving dictator and central figure of the Islamic regime’s authoritarian order, produced a moment of uncertainty over succession, regime cohesion, and the future of Iran’s political system. At the same time, the regime sought to convert mourning, war, and national vulnerability into resources for authoritarian legitimation. This has occurred against the background of deep social anger over economic collapse, political unfreedom, gender apartheid, corruption, and decades of state violence.
The communication environment surrounding these events has been equally consequential. Iran’s prolonged internet blackout, reported as one of the longest country-level shutdowns on record, severely limited citizens’ ability to document violence, communicate with one another, and connect with the outside world. It also made verification more difficult for journalists, human rights groups, researchers, and diaspora publics. In this information vacuum, state and state-aligned actors, foreign governments, opposition groups, influencers, and opportunistic attention-seekers competed to define reality. The war was also accompanied by a surge in AI-generated images, fabricated videos, deepfakes, synthetic propaganda, and false or misleading verification claims. This has intensified the “fog of war” and created a crisis not only of information scarcity, but also of evidentiary trust: real evidence can be dismissed as fake, while fabricated material can circulate as proof.
Despite the unprecedented nature of these developments, Iran’s recent crisis has not yet received sufficient scholarly attention. In particular, the intersection of protest and war in Iran offers fertile ground for comparative research with other authoritarian and conflict-affected contexts, including Belarus, Russia, Turkey, and Egypt. Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, the Belarusian regime’s repression of domestic protest, and other cases of authoritarian resilience under conditions of crisis can serve as productive points of comparison. Against this background, this special issue (intended for submission to Media, War & Conflict (MWC)) invites scholarly contributions that examine Iran’s recent crisis through the lens of war, media, and conflict, broadly understood to include state violence, securitization, communication infrastructures, information warfare, propaganda, journalism under duress, diaspora witnessing, and the mediated dynamics of democratic mobilization and authoritarian survival. The issue aims to place Iran in dialogue with broader debates on war, repression, digital authoritarianism, mediated conflict, and democratic movements under extreme coercion.
We particularly welcome submissions that are empirically grounded, conceptually ambitious, comparatively informed, and attentive to the ethical and evidentiary challenges of researching high-repression environments. Contributions may focus specifically on Iran or use the Iranian case comparatively to rethink broader questions about authoritarianism, war, media, repression, and contentious politics.
Aims and Scope
This special issue seeks to advance understanding of the 2025–26 Iranian protests and the subsequent war as a critical case for studying the relationship between media, conflict, and authoritarian power. We invite papers that address questions such as:
- How do authoritarian regimes use war and national security narratives to intensify domestic repression?
- How do internet shutdowns and communication disruptions during periods of extreme physical repression reshape protest, witnessing, journalism, and accountability?
- How do propaganda, disinformation, conspiracy narratives, and AI-generated content alter the evidentiary conditions of war and repression?
- How do democratic movements survive, adapt, fragment, or transform under conditions of violence, blackout, exile, and geopolitical uncertainty?
- What does the Iran case reveal about the future of mediated conflict and democratic resistance in authoritarian contexts?
The special issue welcomes work from media and communication studies, journalism studies, international relations, sociology, cultural studies, social psychology, and related fields.
Indicative Themes and Topics
Authoritarian violence, securitization, and repression
We invite studies of state violence, mass arrests, executions, legal intimidation, asset confiscation, surveillance, and the securitization of dissent. Contributions may examine how the Islamic Republic frames protest as treason, espionage, foreign infiltration, or wartime sabotage, and how such frames are used to justify repression.
Communication disruption and infrastructural repression
Papers may analyze internet shutdowns, throttling, platform restrictions, telephone disruptions, the National Information Network, satellite connectivity, VPN use, and improvised communication practices. We are especially interested in work that connects infrastructure to power: how communication systems are governed, weaponized, circumvented, and experienced in the context of repression and war. In addition, the unprecedented situation where the Islamic regime also shut down the domestic channels, like SMS or local apps, should be in focus.
AI, Propaganda, disinformation, and narrative warfare
We welcome work on state and state-aligned propaganda, conspiracy theories, foreign-agent narratives, enemy construction, martyrdom discourse, anti-Western and anti-Israeli messaging, and the transnational circulation of contested claims. Contributions may also examine propaganda by other state or non-state actors involved in the conflict.
In particular, the special issue encourages research on AI-generated images and videos, deepfakes, synthetic atrocity claims, automated or semi-automated influence campaigns, AI-assisted verification failures, and the weaponization of uncertainty. We are interested not only in deceptive uses of AI, but also in how the possibility of AI fabrication undermines trust in authentic evidence.
Journalism, fact-checking, and witnessing under blackout
Papers may examine reporting from inside Iran, diaspora journalism, international news coverage, fact-checking practices, open-source investigation, source protection, verification under uncertainty, and the ethics of witnessing violence when direct access is restricted.
Cultural politics, defiance, and collective meaning-making
We invite studies of mourning, public celebration, slogans, songs, visual culture, gendered and embodied resistance, symbolic transgression, humor, memory, and the cultural contestation of state-imposed norms. Contributions may examine how Iranians inside and outside the country produce democratic imaginaries under conditions of fear, grief, hope, and uncertainty.
Diaspora activism, opposition fragmentation, and transnational publics
Papers may explore diaspora mobilization, digital diasporas, opposition fractures, coalition-building, leadership claims, strategic disagreements, and the role of exile communities in shaping international agendas, media narratives, and protest repertoires. Here, the regime’s strategy to blame the diaspora for the war could be examined.
International actors and geopolitical entanglements
We welcome studies of the United States, Israel, European governments, regional actors, international organizations, sanctions, diplomatic negotiations, ceasefire politics, and the ways external intervention shapes regime survival strategies and democratic movements.
Political economy of protest and repression
Contributions may analyze inflation, currency collapse, sanctions, class grievances, labor unrest, material hardship, corruption, and the interaction between economic crisis, war, repression, and protest mobilization. We are particularly interested in studies that examine the political economy of regime survival, including the Islamic Republic’s strategies for circumventing sanctions through cryptocurrencies, informal financial networks, or maritime trade linked to the Strait of Hormuz. Papers may also explore the economic dimensions of repression, including asset confiscation, financial intimidation, punitive taxation, restrictions on property rights, and other coercive measures targeting activists, dissidents, and diaspora communities.
Psychological and social costs of repression and mediated violence
We invite work on trauma, fear, moral injury, collective grief, anxiety, diaspora witnessing, mediated exposure to violence, and the emotional dynamics of protest and repression.
Historical and comparative perspectives
We especially welcome interdisciplinary papers comparing the 2025–26 protests with earlier Iranian protest waves, including 2009, 2017–18, 2019, and 2022. Comparative studies may also situate Iran alongside other authoritarian or conflict-affected contexts where repression, media control, information warfare, and transnational pressure shape contentious politics. Submissions should examine how the unprecedented overlap of extreme physical and digital repression, wartime conditions, and international conflict shaped the phenomena under study. Purely descriptive studies will not be considered. All submissions should offer a clear analytical contribution to our understanding of authoritarian power under conditions of war, repression, uncertainty, and communicative disruption.
Methodological Openness and Ethical Commitment
The special issue welcomes diverse methodological approaches, including computational social science, digital ethnography, discourse analysis, interviews, archival research, visual analysis, open-source investigation, network analysis, surveys, comparative case studies, and mixed-method designs.
Given the risks associated with researching Iran, contributors should be explicit about data limitations, verification challenges, researcher positionality, and the protection of participants, sources, coders, and vulnerable communities. We encourage careful distinction between verified evidence, plausible reporting, contested claims, and propaganda. The aim is not to reproduce the regime’s manufactured uncertainty, but to produce rigorous scholarship capable of confronting authoritarian violence without sacrificing evidentiary standards.
Submission Information
Abstracts of 400–500 words should clearly state the research question, theoretical contribution, methodology, empirical material, and relevance to the special issue. Authors should also include a short biographical note of 100–150 words.
All abstracts should be sent to Pardis Yarahmadi at [pardis.yarahmadi@hdr.qut.edu.au] no later than 31 August 2026. The email subject line should read: Abstract Submission for “Iran Amid Crises” Special Issue.
Abstracts should be submitted as a .docx file and should include the following information: title, author name(s), institutional affiliation(s), email address(es), abstract, keywords, and short biographical note(s).