The final speaker in this session at the 2026 Association of Internet Researchers conference in Mexico City is my QUT colleague Shana Mohammadamini, whose focus is also on the protests in Iran in January 2026 that led to the regime’s murder of some 40,000 people.
Western responses to this also included the creation of AI imagery meant to support Iran and Iranians against their regime; one of the people engaging in this is the Polish content creator Rafal Wegiel, for instance, and Shana examined the themes and messages of such content.
Themes included women and freedom, resistance, protest, and mourning; symbolism included women, darkness, and major landmarks in Iran; these largely represented appeals to affect and emotion. Women were portrayed as engaged in heroic (and often bloody) protest, showing their persistence in the fight for freedom and individual control against state power and oppression; in this, the move between oppression and agency.
Women and mourning was another key theme, and here body bags, graves, candles, bloody, and other signs of death and absence were prominent; this also carries strong emotional markers pointing to national suffering, and positions women as vulnerable subjects and potential witnesses to atrocity.
Women and resistance imagery included symbols of hope such as light, but also national symbols such as armed forces, historical buildings, the Iranian map, and landscapes; the juxtaposition of such imagery played on a sense of contrast and hope for a better future.
Women and freedom imagery also used dramatic lighting, fire, armed forces, and historical buildings, emphasising personal and political struggle.
Women are therefore not represented in this work as a single identity; rather, they are also connected with national symbols, so they represent a collective struggle and are also carriers of the national struggle, grief, and trauma. They are generally shown with open hair, without the hijab, showing opposition to regime rules; this also positions them as political actors confronting the regime. They thus move between vulnerability and agency.
Such AI imagery is therefore the latest digital battlefield of resistance to oppressive regime.
