Iranian Political Science Association Research Letter of Political Science 1735790X 14 4 2019 11 22 The Twitteristic construction of reality: An analysis of networked framing of political values during Iran’s 2017 presidential election The Twitteristic construction of reality: An analysis of networked framing of political values during Iran’s 2017 presidential election 131 161 389 10.22034/ipsa.2019.389 FA Hossein Kermani University of Tehran Journal Article 2020 04 08 This paper tries to understand how Iranian Twitter users framed political values during Iran’s 2017 presidential election. Based on social construction theory and networked framing concept, we argue that Iranian Twitter users as networked publics are constructing reality and making their lived-experiences meaningful by networked framing of 2017 election in a connective action. In order to investigate this argument, we combined social network analysis, ethnographic content analysis and social media critical discourse study approach. First, we collected 2596284 tweets during the election period. Then, we focused on retweet (RT) network as the information diffusion network, and discovered networked publics by applying cluster analysis on this corpus. Afterwards, we identified 50 top influential users in each cluster based on their PageRanks. Finally, we collected all tweets of these users in the whole network and analyzed them. We used 3 coders to code the selected sample of 10416 tweets in 3 rounds. Results showed that three networked publics were formed in RT network: Reformists, Conservatives and Diaspora. Furthermore, findings showed that ‘undesirability of political deception’ and ‘undesirability of corruption’ are the most frequent networked frames in Persian Twitter. We, in addition, analyzed all networked frames based on networked publics and users’ types. This paper tries to understand how Iranian Twitter users framed political values during Iran’s 2017 presidential election. Based on social construction theory and networked framing concept, we argue that Iranian Twitter users as networked publics are constructing reality and making their lived-experiences meaningful by networked framing of 2017 election in a connective action. In order to investigate this argument, we combined social network analysis, ethnographic content analysis and social media critical discourse study approach. First, we collected 2596284 tweets during the election period. Then, we focused on retweet (RT) network as the information diffusion network, and discovered networked publics by applying cluster analysis on this corpus. Afterwards, we identified 50 top influential users in each cluster based on their PageRanks. Finally, we collected all tweets of these users in the whole network and analyzed them. We used 3 coders to code the selected sample of 10416 tweets in 3 rounds. Results showed that three networked publics were formed in RT network: Reformists, Conservatives and Diaspora. Furthermore, findings showed that ‘undesirability of political deception’ and ‘undesirability of corruption’ are the most frequent networked frames in Persian Twitter. We, in addition, analyzed all networked frames based on networked publics and users’ types. http://www.ipsajournal.ir/article_389_c86a7ee3d8ef0b551ed58e354a836f2b.pdf