IndexIntroductionLiterature ReviewSocial Media and Protests in IranMethodResultsOn December 28, 2017, protests broke out in several cities of Iran. Initially, the protesters showed their dissatisfaction with rising prices, unemployment and economic discrimination. They blamed the economic policies of President Hassan Rouhani's government. However, after dissent spread across the country, public discontent grew beyond economic issues to include political dissatisfaction. Social media like Twitter have played a key role in coordinating protests and spreading news around the world. Using content analysis, this exploratory study examines the visual content of Twitter posts (photos and videos) posted during the 2017 Iranian protests. The theoretical framework of this study is guided by the “Dual Path Model of Coping Approach ” which classifies collective action responses into emotion-focused and problem-focused coping. Our results reveal that visual content with efficacy-arousing characteristics was published more than emotion-arousing content. Additionally, visual content with more protest activity is more likely to be retweeted. The implications of this research will be discussed later. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get Original Essay IntroductionOn December 28, 2017, many protests occurred in different cities of Iran. Mashhad, Iran's second most populous city, was the starting point for these protests. Initially, the protesters showed their dissatisfaction with rising prices, unemployment and economic discrimination. They attributed these problems to the economic policies of President Hassan Rouhani's government. However, after dissent spread across the country, public discontent went beyond economic issues to include political issues as well. It should be noted that the occurrence of such protests in Iran is not unprecedented. Indeed, the recent protests in Iran could be considered the largest national protests since the 2009 post-election protests, known as the Green Movement. However, the December 2017 dissents in Iran are different from the post-election protests of 2009. First of all, the recent protests, unlike the past, did not have a particular leader. Historically, the two major instances of public dissent in Iran, which occurred in 2009 and 1999, were led by reformists, who have not played a significant role in the recent protests. More importantly, due to this lack of leadership, the recent protests lacked a specific goal. Furthermore, the participation of intellectuals and the urban middle class was lacking. Indeed, compared to previous demonstrations in Iran, most of the protests occurred in small cities and were mainly supported by young unemployed citizens. The protests of December 2017 were also unique in terms of dispersion. Protests took place in more than 100 cities across Iran, particularly in small towns without a significant history of protests. Despite all these differences, social media like Twitter had a strong impact on the post-election protests of 2017 and 2009. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, “Collective action occurs when a number of people work together to achieve a common goal ”. In the field of new media studies, many scholars have studied the relationship between social media, particularly regarding Twitter's role in actioncollective. However, most of the literature has focused on the textual aspect of tweets rather than the visual ones. To fill this gap, this exploratory research investigates visual content shared on Twitter during the December 2017 protests in Iran. This study classifies visual content posted on Twitter into two categories: emotionally stimulating and stimulating in terms of effectiveness. Previous research shows that emotionally stimulating content, such as violence, can influence behavior that leads to collective action. Numerous researchers have examined the role of Twitter during protests, particularly the content of tweets with Arabic text or the content of images during the 2011 Egyptian revolution. However, no specific research has been conducted on the visual content of Twitter posts during the Iranian protests. The main goal of this article is to understand how Iranian protests are represented through visual content on Twitter. In particular, the main emphasis of this research is on the emotional arousal and efficacy aspects of photos and videos shared on Twitter during the December 2017 protests in Iran. Literature Review Activism in the Age of Social Media Over the past two decades, the benefits of social media networking sites (SNS) have been applauded by many media specialists. In addition to becoming a regular part of daily life, SNSs are an effective tool for collective action, especially for dissidents and protests in several countries. People use their cell phones not only to take photos or videos, but also to spread information about what is happening around them. Indeed, SNSs change the way people interact with political systems. As Malcolm Gladwell (2010) argues, social media has created an arena in which individuals can express their concerns and difficulties to politicians more easily than before. In our new cyberspace, many social networks such as Facebook and Twitter are used as an efficient tool for organizing protests. In this way, SNSs have reshaped civic movements into a new form. Modern communication technologies allow protesters to discuss and share news about their “protest message” with other people around the world. From another perspective, Bennett and Segerberg (2012) introduce the term “connective action”, which refers to a type of action based on sharing personalized content through social media. Traditionally, collective action emphasized a collective identity, “community organizing,” and “media campaigning.” However, Bennett and Segerberg argue that today social movements are more personalized and adapted to people's opinions and lifestyles. Changes in media use and personalized lifestyles have redefined how people communicate about politics. This is the concept of “connective action” that explains this change. The 2011 Tunisian uprising, and the subsequent series of protests known as the “Arab Spring,” can be considered a milestone in research on the relationship between digital media use and action. On the one hand, some scholars are skeptical about the role of social media in political activities and do not consider activities such as blogging and tweeting as real political action. On the other hand, many scholars have supported and demonstrated the relationship between media use and collective action. For example, Zeynep Tufekci and Christopher Wilson's (2012) study on the Arab Spring in Egypt verified that people who use social media are more likely to participate in the protest. In another study supporting this finding, Gil de Zúñiga,Jung and Valenzuela found “that social media users are 11 times more likely to participate in demonstrations than non-users.” Additionally, user-generated networks are essential for breaking news. In particular, they represent a good environment for citizen journalists to cover protests and share them in a real-time environment when mainstream media and journalists fail to fully cover events. Tufekci and Wilson (2012) found that approximately half of the respondents were “citizen journalists” who regularly “documented” and shared images of protests on social media. Social Media and Protests in Iran The results of the 2009 presidential election led to massive protests in Iran's capital. On June 13, the day after the elections, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was announced as the winner for the second term of his presidency. However, Mir Hossein Mousavi, another candidate in the elections, and his supporters disapproved of the results. They believed the results were fraudulent and soon the “Where's my vote?” were circulating among Moussavi's supporters to demonstrate their dissatisfaction with the election results. Initially, green was used as a symbol of Mousavi's campaign after Mohammad Khatami (the former president of Iran) presented him with a green armband. Subsequently, this color became the symbol of the 2009 protests, collectively known as the Green Movement of Iran. Days after the protests, there was still no news coverage of the demonstration in formal media in Iran. However, thanks to the Internet, Iranian protesters have been able to communicate, organize and cover the protests themselves. People used the hashtag #iranelelection to share the latest news about the 2009 protests. This online activity is also known as the “Twitter Revolution”. The government quickly blocked SNSs and restricted Internet access. However, people continued to use social media such as Facebook and Twitter not only to organize events but also to create their own “narratives”. Despite the differences between the 2009 and 2017 protests, social media such as Twitter played a significant role in both protests. During the 2017 protests, protesters used Twitter and Telegram to organize events. According to Internet Word State, in 2017 there were over 56 million Internet users in Iran (69.1% of the population). This means more people could participate in the content creation and distribution process. However, the government has prevented people from accessing the Internet by completely shutting down Internet service providers and temporarily shutting down VPN providers or specific social networking services (such as Instagram or Telegram). Furthermore, Twitter, Telegram and Instagram in Iran should be considered as alternative media that broke the monopoly of official media in a time of crisis and allowed users to present their message in a local and global environment. However, many social media sites such as Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook were blocked in Iran after the 2009 post-election protests (Telegram was also banned in Iran at the time of this writing). However, despite these sites being blocked, many people, including politicians, continue to use them to share information. For example, President Hassan Rouhani and many parliamentarians have an official Twitter account despite being blocked in the country. This contradictory behavior demonstrates that the importance of SNSs is undeniable for political activists, citizen journalists and even politicians. In Iran, citizen images and photojournalism have played an important rolein coverage of Iranian protests since 2009, when phone footage of an Iranian woman killed during a demonstration spread online and subsequently in mainstream media. As Mortensen (2011) points out, photojournalism challenges the ethical standards of conventional journalism from several perspectives. The format is usually fragmented and subjective, and it is often impossible to trace and verify both the author and the origin of the content. Combined with the viral potential of visual content shared on social media, this can create a problematic environment where misinformation, disinformation and distorted content can influence and shape public debate and public opinion. Non-professional images and videos are the only type of user-generated content that is interpreted similarly to professional content. As a result, many media houses encourage their audiences to submit and share such content so that it can be incorporated into their stories. In this way, the boundaries between formal and informal crisis reporting are contested. This speaks volumes about how important and influential the visual content shared by Internet users has become. Visual Content and Social Media MotivationImages are processed more easily by the human brain than textual or verbal content. One study found that heavy television viewers not only overestimated the amount of actual violence in the real world, but were also more likely to see the world as scary and to distrust the people in it. Because social networks are heavily image-saturated environments and images have the potential to create negative emotions, they have the potential to contribute to protests. Kharroub & Bas's (2016) study shows that social media images can sometimes serve as inspiration for political activism. Another study shows that videos that evoke negative emotions are also more likely to be forwarded than non-emotional videos. While viral potential depends on specific circumstances, such as the contributor or the structure of a group, emotional content appears to have the greatest potential to attract the most attention. Many theories such as intergroup theory, social identity theory, relative deprivation theory, and Klanderman's resource mobilization model have studied collective action. Although each of these theories focuses on different aspects of collective action, Van Zomeren, Spears, Fischer, and Leach (2004) combined different elements of collective action theories into a dual-path model that explains two types of behavior that lead to collective action. They viewed theories of collective action not as competing but complementary to each other. According to their dual-pathway model, anger and efficacy are two paths to collective action. Group-based anger refers to an emotion-focused approach. Specifically, relative deprivation and social injustice create anger that leads to emotional responses in collective action. Group effectiveness as a problem-based approach deals with the effectiveness of collective action that can bring about social change. As a matter of fact, emotions like anger don't always lead to collective action. People could also evaluate the effectiveness of their actions. Taken together, previous studies support the idea that social media has a significant impact on collective action and that this role will be strengthened in the future. Although many studies have investigated the role of Twitter in social change and collective action, few have examined the role of emotional images in collective action.).