Representing the Political Rival on Persian X: Ordinary Boundary-Making, Othering, and the Moralization of Conflict across Three Political Cases

Objective: The article examines the representation of the political rival in conflicts on Persian X, asking when such representation moves beyond disagreement over positions and ordinary boundary-making. The analysis centers on the relationship that the text constructs with the political rival. Three cases are examined: Iran’s ۲۰۲۴ presidential runoff (۱۴۰۳ SH), the dispute over the enforcement of the Chastity and Hijab Law, and whether Iran should negotiate with the United States. Method: The research design is qualitative, text-centered, and processual-comparative, with the interactional-discursive cluster serving as the main unit of assessment. This version relies only on evidence clearly traceable in the attached data file and correspondence table; the core argument rests on six explicit and auditable evidentiary packages. Results: The three cases differ in more than the intensity of conflict. In the election case, the relationship with the rival hardens mainly through appeals to legitimacy and belonging. In the hijab case, the dominant pattern takes shape through moralization of conflict and judgments about coercion, humiliation, and harm to everyday life. In the negotiation case, the evidence is more dispersed and supported only by a limited evidentiary segment in which strategic suspicion approaches the moral framing of compromise and surrender. In none of the three cases is the evidence sufficient to establish political hatred as the dominant logic. Understanding online conflict therefore requires distinguishing between the intensification of language and the transformation of the relationship constructed with the rival; in the documented data, this distinction is more defensible at the cluster level than through single-post reading.

کلیدواژه ها:

Affective polarization ، moralization of conflict ، Othering ، Persian X ، representation of the political rival