Socio-Spatial Studies

The Persian podcast “Radio Rah”, hosted by Mojtaba Shakouri, has become a highly popular audio program among Iranian audiences, particularly the younger generation. It has consistently ranked among the top three in most polls conducted on the most beloved podcasts. This article, using the method of thematic analysis, evaluates the content of this podcast’s episodes in order to determine what types of themes are currently favored by the Iranian public. According to the findings, Radio Rah is a podcast aimed at encouraging listeners to think critically and seek ways to live better lives. It appears to carry the mission of helping its audience cope with the sufferings of life. In the podcast, Mojtaba Shakouri explores complex philosophical and psychological concepts in a simple and fluent language. He makes these ideas more tangible and accessible by incorporating literary stories, music, and scientific articles. The most frequently recurring themes in the podcast include the necessity of a realistic outlook on life, the importance of positive practical actions in times of crisis, encouragement of self-awareness and self-knowledge, critique of modernity and consumerist culture, and emphasis on spiritual and emotional growth in life. Furthermore, through a thematic analysis of listeners’ comments on the Castbox platform, it was revealed that emotional resonance with the content, admiration for the quality of production, and acknowledgment of the podcast’s psychological and cognitive impact are the main reasons behind its widespread popularity.

With the growing integration of social media into everyday life, Twitter has become a significant platform for representing users’ lived experiences, particularly during cultural and religious occasions. This study aims to analyze the content of highly engaged tweets posted between March 18 and April 7, coinciding with Nowruz and the month of Ramadan. From among Persian-language tweets that received more than 1,000 likes, 225 tweets were purposefully selected and examined using both qualitative and quantitative content analysis methods. The findings reveal that three main themes—family relationships, humor, and cultural events—had the highest frequency. Among the humor styles, self-enhancing and affiliative humor were the most prevalent, and women participated more actively than men in narrating their everyday experiences. The results further indicate that Twitter serves not only as a platform for entertainment but also as a space for emotional expression, social critique, and identity representation in the presence of an imagined audience. This study highlights the role of humor as a psychological and social strategy for coping with challenging situations and contributes to a deeper understanding of cultural dynamics within the digital space.

This study explores the dynamics of digital activism and perceived civic influence within Persian-language Twitter discourse, focusing on tweets associated with the Iranian petition platform Karzar. Drawing on Jürgen Habermas’s concept of the public sphere, the research investigates whether and how Twitter functions as a space for civic dialogue, participatory discourse, and collective demand-making. Using quantitative content analysis, 100 high-engagement tweets (i.e., those with the most likes) containing the keyword “Karzar” were analyzed in terms of content type, perceived influence, campaign category, and sentiment. The findings reveal that a substantial portion of users demonstrate medium to high levels of perceived influence, particularly in tweets framed as calls to action or expressions of support. While humorous or satirical content was largely devoid of perceived efficacy, politically and socially charged campaigns elicited polarized reactions, suggesting the emergence of a contested digital public sphere. Despite the limitations of the platform and dataset, the study highlights the potential of Persian Twitter to function as a hybrid space for digital civic engagement and deliberation in contemporary Iran. It also raises critical questions about the efficacy, limitations, and future trajectory of decentralized digital activism in restrictive media environments.

The paper aims at tracing the elements of state-people power relation discourse in contemporary Iranian political cartoons featured in Khatkhati Satirical Magazine between March 2018 and March 2019. It addresses a gap in the research of Iranian caricature as a multimodal media and employs visual social semiotic framework (Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996) to analyze 6 cartoons representing the power relation in question. The interaction between image and text, as well as semiotic resources realizing the representational, interactive and compositional metafunctions of the visual mode are carefully examined to decode the messages communicated by the cartoons. The analysis tentatively suggests the following motifs inferred from the analyzed cartoons: dichotomy between the officials and regular people, abuse of power and  the subordinates’ trust by the dominant actor, corruption and hypocrisy underlining the state-people power relation.