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Volume 16, Issue 3 (9-2025)                   Social Problems of Iran 2025, 16(3): 93-132 | Back to browse issues page


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Hajizadegan A, Jalaeipour H. (2025). The Role of Local Online Networks in Empowering Women from Lower Class in Tehran Province (A Study Based on Big Data Mining of Instagram). Social Problems of Iran. 16(3), 93-132. doi:10.61882/jspi.16.3.93
URL: http://jspi.khu.ac.ir/article-1-3828-en.html
1- Ph.D Candidate of Sociology, Department of Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
2- Professor, Department of Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran , jalaeipour@ut.ac.ir
Abstract:   (1037 Views)
This study employs data mining techniques on Instagram big-data to identify and configure the most influential local networks and fields across 11,515 high-engagement local pages in Tehran Province, using social network analysis methods. The findings reveal that as internet penetration has deepened in citizens' daily lives, working-class women have gradually formed robust local online networks, enabling them to create extensive informal micro-enterprises, and emerge as an unintended new social force driving socio-political change. The dominant poles within identified local fields, ranked by network size, are: women engaged in Instagram-based micro-enterprises, celebrities, conservatives, central-city residents, street toughs ("Lāts"), Turkish-speaking communities, pigeon-keeping enthusiasts. Among these seven local fields, national influencer pages exhibit strongest authority within: celebrity networks (highest), working women's networks, conservative circles; indicating these three fields possess greater capacity to directly shape citizens' political attitudes and behaviors. Notably, women engaged in Instagram-based micro-enterprises networks demonstrate significantly greater influence in: high-migration zones, recently developed suburban settlements, areas with weaker traditional/religious/governmental institutions. The study concludes that Tehran's emerging pattern of "quiet encroachments" differs fundamentally from pre-internet era movements in terms of: formation contexts, geographical distribution, core social actors, and types of demands.
Extended Abstract
1. Introduction
The profound penetration of the internet into daily life has sparked a critical debate regarding its impact on socio-political formations. This study moves beyond the dichotomy of overstating versus dismissing the online sphere's influence by proposing an integrated framework that simultaneously observes online and offline variables. Focusing on Tehran Province—a context marked by significant ethnic, cultural, and class diversity—this research investigates how local online networks on the Instagram platform have become a pivotal arena for the economic and social empowerment of lower-class women. In recent years, these women, facing substantial barriers in the formal labor market, have leveraged local online networks to create extensive informal micro-enterprises, inadvertently emerging as a new social force. The theoretical framework synthesizes Castells' theory of "communicative power" in the "network society," Bourdieu's concepts of "field" and "capital," and Granovetter's "strength of weak ties." From this integrated perspective, local online networks are interpreted as new "fields" where a distinct form of "digital communicative capital" is generated and accumulated. Through "weak ties," these networks facilitate access to novel resources and information for marginalized actors. This process not only fosters individual economic empowerment but also, by enabling a sustained and non-confrontational "politics of presence," contributes to the reconfiguration of social structures and challenges the prevailing symbolic order at a macro level.
2. Methodology
This research employs a mixed-methods approach, primarily grounded in a big data mining strategy. The study population comprises 11,515 high-engagement local pages within Tehran Province (excluding central Tehran County) identified in the year 2023-2024. The selection criteria required pages to have over 1,000 followers, demonstrate activity within the past year, and exhibit a clear focus on a specific county or neighborhood within the province. Data collection was performed using a "Link Tracing" method with a snowball sampling approach, starting from a seed list of known local pages and iteratively adding qualifying pages from their followers until data saturation was achieved. Data mining and big data collection were executed using crawlers connected to Instagram's API within the Google Colab environment, utilizing the Python programming language for both data collection and preprocessing. The core network analysis was conducted using the specialized software Gephi. The pivotal step of "local field identification" was accomplished through "Community Detection" based on the "Louvain Algorithm," which optimizes the "modularity" metric to decompose the large network graph into cohesive communities/fields characterized by high internal link density. To analyze the interconnection between these local networks and the national level, data from 4,243 national high-impact pages were collected, and their "Authority" score within each local field was calculated. Finally, to assess the longitudinal trend of women's empowerment, data from 658,902 posts published by local pages between 2015 and 2024 were extracted, and the median number of comments received, disaggregated by the page owner's gender, was analyzed.
3. Findings
The analysis of the network connecting 11,515 local and 4,243 national pages revealed seven dominant local fields, ranked by network size: 1. Women with online businesses (48% of all pages), 2. Celebrities (24%), 3. Conservatives (15%), 4. Central-City Residents (6%), 5. Street Toughs ("Lāts") (3%), 6. Turkish-speaking communities (2%), and 7. Pigeon-keeping enthusiasts (2%). The field of working women was further subdivided into three geographical clusters: west, east, and southeast of the province.
Geographical and Gender Distribution: A starkly uneven gender distribution was observed among local business page owners. In newly established, migrant-receiving counties such as Pardis, Pakdasht, Eslamshahr, Robat Karim, and Qarchak, women constituted 84% to 94% of personal business page owners. In contrast, this share ranged only between 32% and 44% in more traditional counties like Ghods, Malard, Pishva, and Firuzkuh. These areas of strong female influence showed significant overlap with regions that had the highest average annual population growth rates during the 2010s.
National Authority and Political Alignment: Analysis of the authority of national pages indicated that the fields of Celebrities, Working Women, and Conservatives (in that order) were the most influenced by national influencers, granting them a greater capacity to directly shape citizens' political attitudes and behaviors. In terms of political alignment, while working women often exercised caution, their networks showed greater affinity with "transformationist" and "overthrow-seeking" political currents. Educational pages (related to business skills) held the highest authority within this field. Conversely, conservatives were predominantly influenced by principlist and religious pages. Analysis of "celebrity-activist" authority further confirmed that prominent figures supporting the "Woman, Life, Freedom" movement (e.g., Ali Karimi, Golshifteh Farahani, Shervin Hajipour) held significantly higher authority within the field of working women.
Trend of Women's Empowerment: The longitudinal analysis of the median number of comments received by local pages demonstrated a dramatically steeper increase in audience engagement for pages owned by women compared to those owned by men over the past decade. Notably, this favorable trend for women began approximately two years prior to the emergence of the "Woman, Life, Freedom" movement and continued with a sharp upward trajectory.
4. Conclusion
The findings of this research signify a fundamental transformation in the patterns of social and political activism within the peripheries of metropolitan Tehran. The emergence of powerful local online fields centered around working lower-class women demonstrates that the contemporary phenomenon of "quiet encroachment" in Tehran Province differs fundamentally from its pre-internet counterpart in four key dimensions: First, in its formative context, which is born from the constant interplay and mutual reinforcement of online and offline spaces. Second, in its geographical locus, which has shifted from classic informal settlements to new, relatively formal suburban towns (e.g., Pardis, Parand). Third, in its core social agency, where networked lower-class women have supplanted the traditional male poor as the primary actors. Fourth, in the nature of its demands, which have evolved from mere "survival" and a "less-than-dignified life" to aspirations for an "ordinary and dignified life" and demands for an "efficient and non-repressive state."
These local online networks, operating through "weak ties," generate and distribute "digital communicative capital," thereby enabling lower-class women to transcend the constraints imposed by traditional fields such as family and the formal labor market. This dynamic is a quintessential example of a "politics of presence"—a form of collective action whose primary motive is the improvement of individual living conditions but which, when enacted on a mass scale, coalesces into a "non-movement" and produces social changes unintended and often undesired by the structures of power. Consequently, the dual forces of marginalization from the formal economy and the facilitatory role of local online networks have unwittingly transformed lower-class women into a networked and potent social force, granting them an unprecedented level of agency in the contemporary socio-political transformations of Iran.
 
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Type of Article: Original Research | Subject: Economoc sociology
Received: 2025/02/25 | Accepted: 2025/05/21 | Published: 2025/11/22

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